Agreement between America and Taliban

Under the agreement signed on February 29 in Doha, Qatar, the United States committed to a gradual and conditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan within 14 months of signing the agreement. “This will maintain a certain level of pressure on the Taliban to live up to their fundamental commitment under the Doha agreement,” he said. This agreement explicitly and rhetorically states that the United States does not recognize the Taliban or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a state. But the most important and only recognized actor in this agreement is the Taliban. This raises interesting questions about the policy of recognizing a State as an essential condition for peace in the Westphalian sovereign State system; a question of great interest among scholars of the colonial struggle for their right to self-determination and independence. It is this question that haunts the international sphere as actors struggle for recognition and legitimacy in a world order organized according to the Eurocentric practices of the sovereign state system. The wording of that text was tantamount to a State concluding an agreement with another State that it did not constitute an external threat to its sovereignty. Signed in Doha, Qatar, this agreement meticulously refers to dates and times according to the Hijri lunar calendar, the Hijri solar calendar and the Gregorian calendar and is produced in Pashto, Dari and English. This meticulous attention to the recording of time and not to the lived experiences of time as lived by Afghans towards the Americans and their allies articulates the conditions for peace in Afghanistan. In this legal agreement, there are no emotional chest blows for civil and political rights or socio-economic rights for Afghans.

The conditions of peace in Afghanistan are hostage to the legitimacy of the Taliban and depend on the security conditions of the West. After nine rounds of talks, negotiators signed a peace agreement in February 2020 that addresses four main issues: in the language of an insecure and hyperventilating actor, the agreement repeatedly insists that “the Taliban will send a clear message”; “the Taliban will prevent it”; “the Taliban will not allow it”; “The Taliban will not provide individuals and groups, including al-Qaeda, with the land of Afghanistan to recruit, train, raise funds and threaten the United States and its allies.” The precariousness of these asymmetrical promises and expectations of “positive relations” should be the basis of any future dialogue and negotiation on “economic cooperation for reconstruction with the new Afghan Islamic government after the settlement”. In other words, the U.S. government has accepted the idea that even after intra-Afghan dialogues and negotiations, an Islamic government will be established in Afghanistan and the U.S. “will not interfere in its internal affairs.” Therefore, religion and its impact on the national population of a State are classified as secondary under this Agreement. The text of the “Agreement to Bring Peace to Afghanistan” signed between the Taliban and the United States has never been discussed in detail in the US Congress or the British Parliament. This agreement entrusts this task to the Taliban, suggesting that it is possible to recognize them as Afghan nationalists. Lord.

Khalilzad, the veteran diplomat who leads U.S. peace efforts and is himself from Afghanistan, has long insisted that the U.S. is not seeking a withdrawal agreement, but “a peace agreement that allows withdrawal.” The agreement sets a timetable for the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the impoverished Central Asian country once unknown to many Americans and now symbolises endless conflicts, foreign entanglements and an incubator of terrorist conspiracies. The deal also depends on more difficult negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government over the country`s future. Officials hope that these talks will lead to a power-sharing agreement and a permanent ceasefire, but both ideas have been anathema to the Taliban in the past. But it is seen as a step toward negotiating a broader deal that they hope could end the insurgency of the Taliban, the militant movement that once ruled Afghanistan under a strict Islamic code. Following the controversial release of the last group of Taliban prisoners, intra-Afghan talks officially began on September 12, 2020 in Doha, Qatar. With the recent agreement on the rules of procedure, the two sides are now discussing the agenda for the formal talks.

Here, Mehdi J. Hakimi, executive director of the Rule of Law Program and a lecturer at Stanford Law School, reviews the current state of the U.S.-Taliban agreement and peace negotiations, including the potential for a U.S. military withdrawal in the final weeks of the Trump administration and the challenges facing the upcoming Biden administration. Among other things, the February pact also provided for a prisoner exchange, the opening of intra-Afghan negotiations and the lifting of sanctions. The Afghan government was not a party to the February agreement. Even in the description of al-Qaeda in the agreement, the Taliban refused to accept the word “terrorist.” The language emphasizes the Taliban`s commitment to prevent future attacks, not the regrets of the past. Retaliation against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies was the catalyst that led to the US invasion. But it was an emerging sense of futility that was perhaps best demonstrated by the United States` acceptance of relatively small concessions by the Taliban in the deal that led successive governments to find a way out. The agreement, which was signed on the 29th. February 2020, calls for the withdrawal of all US forces by May 2021, but only if the Taliban keep their promises to sever relations with terrorist groups and participate in intra-Afghan talks on a permanent ceasefire and political roadmap for Afghanistan. Andar argued that kabul`s importance to the success of the US-Taliban deal has been overlooked, “so this agreement has not been effective in bringing peace, stopping bloodshed and ending the war and the suffering of Afghans.” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said in a Skype interview with VOA Afghanistan Service that the group had respected the agreement.

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