The Trump administration may soon strike a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could potentially begin the process of withdrawing nearly all US troops from the country after 18 years of war.
According to the Washington Post, there are two main parts of the deal. The first is that the Taliban, the brutal Islamist group that previously ruled the country, will start negotiations with the Afghan government. That’s quite the concession, as the Taliban has long refused to do that, claiming leaders in Kabul are merely US puppets.
Second, it would agree to a ceasefire in fighting against the Afghan government and renounce all its ties to al-Qaeda, the terrorist group it harbored as it planned the 9/11 attacks.
That would allow America to reduce the number of service members in the country from around 14,000 to between 8,000 and 9,000.
Nothing has been finalized yet, and it’s exceedingly possible that talks break down, experts say, especially since the Taliban has broken commitments before and isn’t a particularly trustworthy negotiating partner.
Even some of the president’s top allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), have noted their skepticism. “Mr. President, keep your foot on their throat!” the senator tweeted soon after the Post story broke. “A meaningful counter-terrorism force is an insurance policy against another 9/11. Fight them there so they don’t ever come here again!”
The administration’s hope, though, remains that all sides put pen to paper before the Afghan presidential election in September. Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born top US envoy for peace talks, sounded upbeat about the progress made this week after his eighth round of talks with the Taliban.
Wrapping up my most productive visit to #Afghanistan since I took this job as Special Rep. The US and Afghanistan have agreed on next steps. And a negotiating team and technical support group are being finalized.
— U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) July 31, 2019
President Donald Trump may have foreshadowed this deal during a July interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. Asked about when he’d withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, Trump said, “I’ve wanted to pull them out. And you know, I have pulled a lot out. We were at 16,000. We’re down to about 9,000, which a lot of people don’t know.”
When I asked the Pentagon after that interview if Trump had reduced US troops levels to 9,000 from the oft-stated 14,000 number (not 16,000 like the president told Carlson), a spokesperson told me the total remained 14,000.
News of the partial deal remains one of the best items to come out of Afghanistan in a long time. It may mean the official start of a process that finally ends US involvement after spending around $900 billion there and roughly 2,400 Americans dying in service — including two US soldiers, one of them 20 years old, killed this week.
Trump wants most US troops out of Afghanistan. That may soon happen.
Trump, who abhors lengthy US military occupations abroad, has long wanted to end America’s time in Afghanistan.
“What are we doing there? These people hate us,” Trump said in a 2012 Fox News appearance. “We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars, on this nonsense — and the minute we leave, everything blows up, and the worst guy gets it. The one who hates this country the most will end up taking over Afghanistan.”
He held on to that sentiment when he became president. Even as some of his top advisers pushed him in 2017 to send many thousands more troops to the country, he staunchly resisted, arguing it ultimately wouldn’t lead to victory.
In the end, Trump agreed to send 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan — far fewer than his aides wanted. But he showed his clear displeasure with escalating the war during an August speech that year about his decision.
“My original instinct was to pull out — and, historically, I like following my instincts,” he told a military crowd in Virginia. “But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office; in other words, when you’re president of the United States.”
It’s therefore no surprise that Trump would push his administration to find a diplomatic solution to end the US military mission there. The US and the Taliban have worked on a deal in earnest since January, and now it seems to be bearing some fruit.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signaled this week that Trump wants most troops out ahead of the 2020 presidential election, though he walked back those comments soon after.
But even Trump won’t say that he’d remove every American from the country.
“I would like to just get out. The problem is it just seems to be a lab for terrorists,” the president told Carlson last month. “I call it ‘the Harvard of terrorists.’” So what’s his proposal instead? “I would leave very strong intelligence there,” he said. “You have to watch.”
Which means the US may not fully withdraw from Afghanistan with Trump in office — or maybe ever.