Burqas and betrayals: Will U.S. sell out Afghans to the Taliban?

Is the White House so eager to quit Afghanistan that it will hand 35 million Afghans over to the Taliban in rushed “peace” negotiations?

Hamdullah Mohib, the visibly angry Afghan national security adviser, raised this question with U.S. journalists and diplomats recently on a visit to Washington, earning sharp State Department pushback.

Yet it is a key question, as special U.S. representative Zalmay Khalilzad negotiates a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal directly with Taliban leaders at talks in Qatar. No Afghan officials are present — because the Taliban refuses to talk to them. The talks, Mohib said, were “increasing the legitimacy of the Taliban” and “decreasing the legitimacy of the Afghan government.”

Even worse, Mohib charged, is that Khalilzad and other U.S. diplomats aren’t fully briefing Afghan leaders about what is really going on in negotiations. Mohib says this is creating fear and uncertainty among the Afghan public, and undermining Afghan army morale.

The Afghan government recognizes that after 17 years of war, many Americans wonder why U.S. troops remain there, and may sympathize with President Donald Trump, who told ABC last month, “We got to get out of these endless wars and bring our folks back home.”

But the United States has a longterm interest in Afghanistan’s future and not just in obtaining a promise from Taliban leaders to bar terrorist bases — the apparent quid pro quo for Washington’s providing them a withdrawal timeline.

If a “peace” accord opens the door to a Taliban takeover (returning women to the burqa and virtual imprisonment), America’s 17year venture will go down in history as Trump’s failure. And, if the Taliban takes over, why should anyone believe its guarantee that the country will never again play host to terrorists? More likely, with more than half the Afghan population opposed to the Taliban, the country would soon revert to all-out civil warfare and chaos, in which terrorists thrive.

Khalilzad claims that the Taliban must eventually agree to a ceasefire and negotiate with the Kabul government as part of any deal. But the Taliban has shown no signs it is willing.

Instead, negotiations have focused on the U.S. withdrawal timeline — and Taliban “guarantees” to block terrorists.

No wonder the Kabul government is worried about an American sellout. All the more so when the Taliban is backed by Pakistan and Pakistani officials appear to know more about what is going on in the talks than do Afghan government leaders.

“By signaling the desire to withdraw, you strengthen the resolve of the enemy and undermine your ally,” says the Hudson Institute’s Husain Haqqani. He believes the negotiations should first have focused on a cease-fire and reconciliation among Afghans, including the Taliban. Now “the Afghan government genuinely perceives that the U.S. priority is how to withdraw quickly rather than maintain the gains of the last 18 years.”

And maintaining those gains may require a small but long-running U.S. presence to ensure Pakistan, and any Taliban party that joins the Afghan government, understand that America retains interest.

The lack of transparency about U.S.-Taliban talks raises serious questions about whether they are merely meant as a cover story for a hasty U.S. pullout.

The only way to calm those fears is for Khalilzad to be more forthcoming — to Americans and to Kabul.

“It is not for us to prescribe American national interests,” says Mohib. “What we don’t accept is to be thrown under the bus.”