2/27/20E
Every American should pay attention to the Friday, Feb. 28, announcement of a peace deal with the Taliban that the Trump administration is expected to sign. There are important questions that this administration has not fully answered on this Afghanistan deal. The agreement calls for an initial U.S. troop withdrawal over a five-month period from the current 12,000 troops to no more than 8,600. The first problem is conditionality. Pentagon officials insist that withdrawals of U.S. forces can only happen if the Taliban leaders do not shelter al Qaeda and other terrorist players operating on Afghan territory. According to senior U.S. officials, the job of verifying the Taliban’s word falls to Gen. Scott Miller, the senior commander of forces in Afghanistan. But there is little in the way of metrics and measurements to ensure that judgement call is sound. And, back in Washington, there is concern that President Trump will be the actual decider-in-chief, rather than Miller or Pentagon leaders, and that he will give more priority to his own politics than Americans’ security. Verification may come down to intelligence. But whom should Americans trust? With a commander-in-chief who rejects intelligence findings it may be hard to know what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan. We need a more comprehensive way to know if the Taliban are truly complying or just buying time to regroup. Verification and compliance have not been fully spelled out, and it is not clear which of the many terrorist groups in and around Afghanistan will be monitored, including ISIS and the Haqqani network. Second, this agreement requires an in-depth understanding of the complexities of internal Afghan politics—not something that Trump seems interested in.
Third is the question of what U.S. remaining forces can accomplish for themselves and Afghans—especially if Trump’s true agenda is a draw-down to absolute zero. It is hard enough to stop terrorism within Afghanistan now. Launching special operations and countering violent attacks with fewer supporting troops also could prove difficult and subjects our forces to higher risk. A reduced American footprint also signals to our NATO allies’ capitals that it is safe to withdraw. It is always possible that Trump simply will order all 12,000 U.S. forces home without an orderly process, as he did in Syria. As far back as summer 2017, the president told advisers that he wanted all troops out of Afghanistan by November 2020 suggesting that the terms matter less than his reelection. That is a deadline, not a process. It is exactly the kind of timeline-based pullout Republicans (especially) have opposed for years. A big peace agreement without force nor diplomacy will be hard to execute and American credibility will be sacrificed. Peace deals always sound good on paper. We all want peace. But it has to be real peace, not a run for cover. And it has to be managed by good leaders here and overseas. Congress and the American public should ask hard questions. There are many.
