Afghanistan - whose responsibility?

This letter appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 18 August.

          Some media commentators are trying to lay the blame for the Afghanistan debacle on Donald Trump and Joe Biden equally, claiming Biden mistakenly pursued a flawed Trump policy. It is certainly true that from the moment Trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and bring the American forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before US-Taliban peace talks began on February 25, 2019. Abdul Ghani Barada, the co-founder of the Taliban, was at the table.

          They appeared successful. Agreement was quickly reached on a draft peace deal involving the withdrawal of US and international troops from Afghanistan, matched by an undertaking by the Taliban to prohibit other jihadist groups operating within the country. This extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hardline extremist Islamist movement was headed: “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban, and the United States of America.”

          This Doha deal (it was concluded in Qatar) was greeted with optimism by Trump. “I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we’re not all wasting time,” he said.

          Further negotiations followed, and with less than a week remaining of the Trump presidency, the US military met its goal of reducing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan to about 2,500. The deal that Trump reached with the Taliban included, as the quid pro quo for the US final withdrawal, an agreement by the Taliban to enter serious peace negotiations with the Afghan government.

          If Biden had indeed followed through, US troops would have left Afghanistan by the end of May, the Afghan government would still be in power, and the Taliban would either have negotiated some form of joint stable administration, or be in the process of doing so.

          I am afraid that responsibility for the current situation rests fairly and squarely on the Biden administration.