By Bond Robertson 
A historian at Stanford University in California who specializes in Afghanistan and Central Asia believes that the Trump administration’s peace agreement with the Taliban as of February 2020 legitimized the Taliban and paved the way for Afghanistan’s “capitulation.”
The fundamental mistake, after the 2001 invasion itself, was to follow Trump’s plan to honor the peace agreement with the Taliban, which essentially laid out a kind of roadmap against surrender and the collapse of the Afghan state, which Washington simply supported, and legitimized the Taliban. They actually gave them a roadmap to launch the attack, which they did within two weeks, says Stanford University professor Robert Cruz in CNN Interview.
an agreement “Afghanistan Peace AgreementIt sets a 14-month timetable for the withdrawal of “all US, allied and coalition forces”. In the agreement, the US also pledged to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners, while the other side was to release up to 1,000 prisoners. The Taliban also vowed “not to threaten the security of Americans or their allies.”
Critics say the deal was too weak. The former defense chief, Ambassador Dessen, says the agreement was not too weak, but at the same time it indicates that the Americans did not take their own situations with the Taliban seriously.
– Now this agreement is completely confidential, so there are very few outsiders who have actually seen what is inside. I still know so much about it that I don’t think the convention itself is too weak. But you can say that at no time did the Taliban show any sign of commitment to the agreement in terms of reducing the level of violence. They admitted that they had retreated from their attacks on NATO forces, but responded with continuous attacks on Afghan forces and Afghan police. When they faced these attacks, they only responded that it was the other party who started the attacks. So the Taliban did not comply with the agreement regarding the level of violence, former Defense Minister Ambassador Dessen tells Netavisen.
– But the Americans did not leave any consequences for that. They actually handled the agreement in such a way that this withdrawal is not based on terms, but is driven by time. When you finally say explicitly that you want to go out on a certain date, you’re signaling on the American side that the case of low levels of violence is not seriously intended, and that you’ve actually given up, says Diesen.
Biden was free to drop the deal
Although it was President Donald Trump who, upon concluding an agreement with the Taliban, initiated the process of complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden was free to change plans. Instead, Biden announced that all US forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
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Biden was free to say that this was an agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban, and said he did not support it. But Biden basically agreed that it was time to pull out, and that the United States had been in Afghanistan long enough, says Civita’s adviser to Netavizen, Eric Lock.
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The agreement was very weak and non-binding. One could debate to what extent this was an agreement. It was more about intentions. The agreement to enter into dialogue with the Afghan government was not pursued by the Taliban. It was a weak agreement in the sense that it lacked the mechanisms and lashes to hold the Taliban. There were no mechanisms, will, or ability to offer a negotiated solution, Locke says.
– Never the intention to create a democracy
The four-page agreement states that the Taliban must take measures “to prevent any group or individual, including al-Qaeda, from using Afghan soil to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.” It also imposes obligations on the Taliban to instruct its members not to cooperate with groups or individuals who threaten the security of the United States.
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President Biden Talk to the nation Monday night about the dramatic withdrawal from Afghanistan. He did not criticize himself and claimed that nation building in Afghanistan was never the intention of the United States, but that the national interest of the United States was to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil.
Biden said there was absolutely no intention of creating a unified and centralized democracy Languages.
I have argued for many years that our mission should be narrow and focused on counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency or nation-building. That’s why I opposed escalation when it was proposed in 2009 when I was vice president, Biden said.
Biden weakened the credibility of NATO
The former defense chief, Ambassador Dyson, believes that Biden has weakened the credibility of the United States and NATO.
I think Biden is absolutely right when he says there is no solution with continued nation-building or a well-functioning Afghan state, says Diesen.
But by doing it this way, Biden has weakened the credibility of the United States and NATO, while strengthening the hardliners in the Taliban. The Taliban is a complex organization also made up of moderate forces with desires for solutions in which the Taliban share government authority with others. But these moderate forces also lost, while the hardliners won. It will have consequences for how Afghanistan is governed in the future, and it may have consequences for us in the West with the potential for refugee flows and the return of al-Qaeda and ISIS again, making Afghanistan a free zone and a hotbed of terrorism, says Diesen.
I inherited the deal from Trump
President Donald Trump took the opportunity to reach out to his archenemy Biden, and said the incumbent should resign in disgrace for allowing what is now happening in Afghanistan.
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Biden Languages She defended her decision to follow through on her predecessor’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan.
When I took office as president, I inherited an agreement that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under that agreement, US forces were scheduled to leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, just over three months after I took office, Biden said.
– US forces had already resigned under the Trump administration from about 15,500 US troops to 2,500 troops in the country, and the Taliban had been in their strongest army since 2001. As president, I had to choose either to implement this agreement or to continue the fight against The Taliban are in the middle of the war season this spring.
He adds that the US-Taliban ceasefire would have ended immediately if he had gone to make the final decision.
The former UN envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, last week expressed his dissatisfaction with the US’s ability to negotiate with the Taliban.
The Americans surrendered so quickly in the negotiations without asking for anything in return. “I think that came as a surprise to the Taliban,” Eddie said Internet newspaper.
Facts about the Taliban
* Founded by Afghan exiles in Pakistan during the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, with the support of Pakistani intelligence.
* He seized power in Afghanistan in 1996.
*They are mainly supported by the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
Ruled by a coalition of US-backed warlords in 2001.
* It was for many years led by Mullah Omar, who died in 2013 and the death was not known until two years later.
* Akhtar Mansour took over but was killed in a US bombing in 2016.
* Hibatullah Akhundzada is today the Supreme Leader of the Taliban.
* Mullah Omar’s son, Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub, is the supreme military commander.
* Sirajuddin Haqqani leads the so-called Haqqani Network, which plays a major role in financing the Taliban.
* Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar heads the political office of the Taliban and had an active role in the negotiations with the United States and the government in Kabul that took place in Doha.
* Abdul Hakim Haqqani leads the Taliban negotiating delegation.
– Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai was in the government the last time the Taliban seized power in Kabul and served as the group’s “foreign minister” long ago.
(Kildy: The Island, NTB)