#YOUTUBE ROAD TO NOWHERE VERIFICATION#
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Vanda Felbab-Brown Wednesday, MaFurthermore, there’s very limited capacity for the Taliban to control violence themselves, even if they wanted to.įrom my own experience, the Taliban are too decentralized and too diverse a group to meaningfully control themselves. The U.S.-Taliban agreement left them no incentive not to, so of course we’re already bombing the Taliban in Helmand Province. No one should be surprised the Taliban is attacking Afghan government forces. We’ve seen this before in Afghanistan and elsewhere: In the time between commitments to limit or cease violence and the final implementation of agreements, violence may spike as one side or the other seeks to change the facts on the ground to achieve relative advantage ahead of formal compliance. In such an environment, the entire premise of intra-Afghan peace talks is called into question and is potentially rendered useless. departing, the government of Afghanistan will have significantly less power and authority to hold the Taliban accountable, and to enter into talks on an even remotely equal footing.

These activities by the Taliban are the very definition of bad-faith behavior, and with the U.S. would be sanguine about the Taliban attacking our principal ally in this war, the Afghan government? On its face alone, the Afghan government would be hard-pressed to find a good, logical reason to meet amidst ongoing attacks. and its coalition partners would be immune from attack, but the U.S. commit to an agreement where the Taliban could conclude that the U.S. Just on schedule, the Taliban are attacking the Afghan government while supposedly not attacking the U.S. And yet, ongoing violence, especially against innocent civilian communities, largely negates the value in these discussions. The official U.S.-Taliban deal details a number of talks that would continue well into the future between the U.S., Taliban, and the government of Afghanistan. Ongoing violence prevents these from occurring.

and Taliban committed to intra-Afghan talks. These connections run deep and are not likely to be given up at precisely the moment the U.S. It’s also worth remembering that the number two in the Taliban - Sirajuddin Haqqani, recently published by the New York Times - orchestrated the introduction of the lead elements of al-Qaida into the war against the Soviet Union.

#YOUTUBE ROAD TO NOWHERE VERIFICATION#

Without a specific verification and enforcement mechanism, aspirational Taliban commitments will be impossible to address, and local incidents of violence will be chalked-up to rogue elements of the group. That’s not only my view, it’s also what Taliban leaders are saying informally outside the negotiating halls. And why would we ever believe the Taliban would now break with al-Qaida et al, when under the hammer blows of 150,000 coalition troops and hundreds of thousands of Afghan security personnel, they wouldn’t. and allied interests - these are not measurable, nor are they enforceable. Vagaries about ongoing negotiations with the Afghan government or the broad intent to keep Afghanistan safe from those who would collude with the Taliban against the U.S. Yet, the Taliban in turn have been obligated to very little that can be measured in any meaningful sense. All of this was done - seemingly - to create an environment in which the Taliban felt the U.S. negotiators have provided in detail exactly what they intend to do in order to fulfill their end of the bargain.

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The Taliban did not.įrom a specific departure deadline to a series of diplomatic and legal obligations, U.S. committed to a significant number of measurable commitments. While others have written more comprehensively on the overall agreement, here, I’ll express my specific misgivings over a number of points.

The so-called “ Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” will not only not be honored by the Taliban, it will also not bring peace. As I’ve said publicly, the Taliban are untrustworthy their doctrine is irreconcilable with modernity and the rights of women and in practice, they’re incapable of summoning the necessary internal controls and organizational discipline needed to implement a far-flung agreement like this. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2011-13, I have my own perspective on this agreement, which is grounded in practical, lived experience.

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