KABUL, Afghanistan – Both the Afghan government and its Taliban opponents appear to be preparing for a violent spring amid uncertainty over whether the Biden government will meet the May 1 deadline for the withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan.
On Thursday, the Pentagon raised questions about whether the withdrawal – agreed in a peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban in February 2020 – would take place on time, while the Biden government reviews the agreement made by its predecessor. This statement came after bellicose comments from the Taliban and Afghan government officials, amplified by waves of violence across the country.
“Without them fulfilling their commitments to renounce terrorism and prevent violent attacks against Afghanistan’s National Security Forces, it is very difficult to see a specific path to the negotiated settlement,” said Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby, in a news briefing. “But we are still committed to that.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, said Friday on social media that Mr. Kirby’s claims were “unfounded”.
The agreement between the Taliban and the US government started the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan in exchange for promises of Taliban counterterrorism and a promise to pressure the Afghan government to release 5,000 prisoners. The move represented the United States’ strongest attempt to extricate itself from its longest war, potentially paving the way for the Taliban’s future inclusion in the Afghan government.
But the negotiations excluded the Afghan government and left it feeling marginalized and unprecedented, according to Afghan officials. Under former President Donald J. Trump, they said that American diplomats often ignored Kabul’s concerns in trying to speed up negotiations.
There are currently 2,500 American soldiers in Afghanistan, up from 12,000 last year. And while the Afghan government is in favor of withdrawing Western forces, it wants a slower schedule than agreed with the Taliban.
Now, he faces the prospect that the uncertainty surrounding meeting the troop withdrawal deadline could fuel further violence.
With peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, stalled, the Washington review will examine the Taliban’s commitments to break ties with terrorist groups and reduce violence as agreed.
American officials have long insisted that the agreement was “based on conditions” and that, if the Taliban fails to comply with these terms, it will extend the presence of American forces in the country.
The Taliban, preparing for the spring fighting season, are already well positioned in several Afghan cities, after making steady gains across the country in recent years.
But recent Biden White House openings have sent a more reassuring message to President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan and other government officials, raising his hopes that they will no longer be marginalized and that the Americans will not be leaving anytime soon.
Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, launched a tough diatribe against the Taliban last week while speaking to a group of Afghan commandos at an air base outside Kabul, the capital.
“They have proved that they do not want peace and that they are a terrorist group,” said Mohib, who has a long history of speaking such sharp rhetoric. His last comments came in the wake of a phone call with his new American counterpart, Jake Sullivan.
Afghan officials said in particular that Sullivan’s hour-long plea restored a certain level of trust between the Ghani government and the White House and made them confident that their voices will be heard as the peace talks in Doha continue.
On Thursday, the new secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, spoke with Ghani and expressed “the US’s desire that all Afghan leaders support this historic opportunity for peace, preserving the progress made in the past 20 years”.
The White House’s assurances that the Ghani government will have broad lines of communication with the Biden cabinet also appear to have allayed the Afghan government’s concerns about the U.S. decision to keep Zalmay Khalilzad, the diplomat who led the US-Taliban negotiations that the Afghan government.
Khalilzad will report to a “very organized” decision-making process, said Ghani during a virtual appearance at the Aspen Security Forum, adding that he expects a “predictable relationship” with the Biden government.
Some Afghan officials are suspicious of Khalilzad and are hostile to his dialogue with the Taliban under the Trump administration, especially his pressure to release the nearly 5,000 Taliban prisoners in the hope that there will be a reduction in violence.
It was not. But it paved the way for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which started in Doha in September.
Asfandyar Mir, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, said that an additional complication for the Biden government is that the Afghan government is a “divided house” with rivalries everywhere.
Many Afghan officials say they believe the Taliban has only one interest: to take power by force. And all sides in the conflict agree that missing the deadline for withdrawing May troops would quickly change any balance that has been struck on the country’s battlefields and could cause a concerted Taliban effort to enter cities.
In the meantime, regional powers, especially Iran and Pakistan, are buying time and waiting to see what comes next with Biden.
Iran, for example, received Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban’s deputy leader, in Tehran on Wednesday, which can be seen as a demonstration of the country’s willingness to play a more active role in the negotiations.
Iran’s involvement in the Afghan war has changed since 2001, highlighting changes in geopolitical currents throughout the war. On the one hand, the official Tehran line denounced the Taliban’s return as a direct threat to Iran. But on the other hand, Iranian operatives opened the insurgent group discreetly, offering weapons and other equipment, in southwest Afghanistan, Afghan officials said. .
The Taliban “do not trust the United States and we will fight any group that is mercenary for the United States,” said Baradar, quoted by Iranian media in an apparent reference to the Afghan government.
But just a month earlier, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, almost offered an Iranian-trained Shiite Afghan militia to serve the Kabul government in the “fight against terrorism”. He was speaking in an interview with an Afghan news agency.
Local officials took this as a clear signal from their powerful neighbor that they intend to become more involved in the Afghan conflict.
Earlier this week, a Taliban delegation met with officials in Moscow and, on Friday, Abbas Stanekzai, a Taliban negotiator, told reporters that the Ghani government is not “honest about peace”.
Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the Afghan government council who leads the peace talks, sounded a pessimistic note in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday.
“The Taliban took a position of a kind of maximalist,” said Abdullah. “Before the negotiations, we were led to believe that there would be a significant reduction in violence,” he added.
“The Taliban’s recent attitude has not been encouraging,” said Abdullah, noting that the group had not yet promised to break with Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the main reason why US forces invaded the country in 2001.
A report by the U.S. Treasury Department earlier this month indicated that Al Qaeda only gained strength in Afghanistan and continued its ties with the Taliban throughout 2020.
Despite waves of targeted killings across the country – causing fear in some of Afghanistan’s most populous cities, including Kabul – Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission found that the number of civilian deaths has decreased by more than 20 percent compared with 2019.
The report also found that 8,500 civilians were killed and injured in Afghanistan in 2020.
Najim Rahim and Fahim Abed contributed reporting.