Claims of progress in talks with the Taliban by US President Donald Trump’s administration have sparked fears even among the his allies that his impatience with the war in Afghanistan could lead him to withdraw troops too soon, leaving the country at risk of returning to the same volatile condition that prompted the invasion in the first place.
Discussions between a US envoy and the Taliban are advancing weeks after the administration said it wanted to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan.
That has prompted some critics to say that Trump is telegraphing a withdrawal — the same thing he accused former US president Barack Obama of doing by saying he wanted to end the US combat mission in 2014.
“It’s an effort to put lipstick on what will be a US withdrawal,” said Ryan Crocker, a former US ambassador to Kabul under Obama.
A negotiated settlement to the US’ longest war poses a dilemma for Trump. He has often declared he wants to end lengthy overseas military entanglements, something he made clear in December last year by declaring the Islamic State group defeated in Syria and announcing he was pulling 2,000 US troops from that country over the objections of his top foreign policy advisers.
The stakes are higher in Afghanistan, a conflict that has cost 2,400 American lives and taxpayers hundreds of billions of US dollars.
In October 2001, the US invaded the country to oust the Taliban and al-Qaeda in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the CIA director warned as recently as Tuesday that Afghanistan could once again become a terrorist haven.
However, now even fellow Republicans worry that reports of progress could embolden Trump to withdraw troops from Afghanistan before the region is stable, reintroducing the conditions that first ensnared the US in the conflict.
The Taliban now control nearly half the country and carry out near-daily attacks, and foreign-policy experts fear that any progress on protecting women and minorities in the country could be lost if the militant group is once again part of the government.
The top Republican in the US Congress, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, cautioned the president against a hasty exit from the war.
“While it is tempting to retreat to the comfort and security of our own shores, there is still a great deal of work to be done, and we know that left untended, these conflicts will reverberate in our own cities,” McConnell said on Tuesday.
James Dobbins, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Obama administration, said Trump “seems to have abandoned” the conditions-based strategy he espoused in 2017.
The future of troops in Afghanistan is anybody’s guess, he said.
“I don’t think anybody, including probably him, can predict his behavior,” Dobbins said.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the administration’s priority is to “end the war in Afghanistan, and to ensure that there is never a base for terrorism in Afghanistan again.”
Afghan officials hope Trump will explain his intentions in further detail during his State of the Union address next week.
Taliban officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said that the two sides had reached an understanding about the withdrawal of US and NATO troops and that the militant group had made assurances that Afghan soil would not be used again for attacks against the US or others.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and ‘everything’ must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive ceasefire,” US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad said.
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