Afghanistan peace talks crumble
What happened
Nearly a year of negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan collapsed this week after President Trump canceled plans for a secret meeting with Taliban and Afghan government leaders at Camp David. Trump revealed on Twitter that he had invited both sides to the presidential retreat in Maryland in order to finalize a peace agreement to end the 18-year-long war, but called off talks after a suicide car bombing in Kabul that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. Even some of the president’s Republican allies were shocked by the invitation. “Camp David is where America’s leaders met to plan our response after al Qaida, supported by the Taliban, killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. “No member of the Taliban should set foot there. Ever.”
American negotiators had reached an agreement “in principle” with the Taliban to withdraw 5,400 of the remaining 14,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan immediately and the rest over the next 16 months. In exchange, the Taliban would promise not to harbor international terrorist organizations such as al Qaida. The withdrawal would have enabled Trump to partly fulfill a campaign promise to bring U.S. troops home, but there was reportedly conflict among the president’s key advisers over whether to trust the Taliban. Trump said the peace talks “are dead as far as I’m concerned.”
What the editorials said
This is what happens when you treat diplomacy like a “reality show,” said the Chicago Tribune. Trump hoped to “produce, direct, and star in a grand moment in American history” by personally brokering a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government in a dramatic summit at Camp David. But the Taliban have refused to negotiate with the Afghan government until after they have reached an agreement with the U.S. and may not have accepted Trump’s theatrical invitation. His bungling of these talks will “lead to more violence and bloodshed in a country ravaged by nearly two decades of war.”
“The best thing to be said for the planned Camp David meetTrump’s explanation for canceling the summit “makes little sense,” said Max Boot in The Washington Post. Sixteen other U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year, but negotiations have continued nonetheless, without a cease-fire. It’s more likely that Trump “got cold feet” about an agreement that “would have resulted not in peace but in a civil war that would eventually leave the Taliban in control of much of the country—as it was before 9/11.”
Eighteen years after 9/11, the U.S. has “failed to expel the Taliban,” said Robin Wright in NewYorker.com. The group now controls roughly 46 percent of the country’s territory, more than at any other point during the U.S. intervention. Any peace deal will have to be premised on the recognition that the Taliban “have the right to a role in ruling Afghanistan.” That’s a gamble we have to take, said Daniel DePetris in TheFederalist.com. The U.S. has “done all it can in Afghanistan,” with 2,400 service members killed, 20,000 wounded, and $1 trillion squandered. “Instead of finding excuses to stay, it’s time to come home.”
Clearly, Trump is looking for the same exit strategy the U.S. used in Vietnam, said Andrew Bacevich in the Los Angeles Times: Give up “and call it peace.” At least after the Vietnam War, the U.S. accepted some 1.3 million refugees fleeing the political turmoil left in the wake of our misguided intervention. The Trump administration will do nothing of the sort for Afghans, who’ll probably be plunged back into a Taliban-run medieval theocracy. History tells us that “when the Americans finally leave, they won’t look back.”