Why Trump should reject the Afghan deal
Given the Taliban’s sordid history, it is hard to believe it can be a partner for peace
United States President Donald Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one. He extricated the US from Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear accord with Iran. He pulled us out of an arms-control agreement with Russia that President Vladimir Putin repeatedly violated. But if news reports are accurate, the US State Department is about to capitulate to the Taliban, Al Qaida’s long-time ally, as US forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan. The president should reject this deal.
Throughout the talks in Doha, there has been nothing the Taliban could do to make the State Department walk away from the table. The group has conducted daily attacks resulting in the deaths of Afghan civilians, US soldiers and our allies. It has dispatched suicide bombers throughout the country. Its men have terrorised the Afghan population, targeting women and girls. They have done all this while continuing to harbour and fight alongside Al Qaida in an alliance the two groups have maintained for decades.
Just recently, the Taliban released a video justifying the 9/11 hijackings and other terrorist attacks in the West. The Taliban bragged the deadliest day of terror in our history was a “heavy slap” on American faces.
We should not withdraw US forces based on a political timetable that grants concessions to the Taliban and allows the terrorists to maintain safe havens from which they can plan and train for future attacks in the West.
Despite all of this and more, special representative Zalmay Khalilzad, who has led the talks, says he is satisfied with the Taliban’s supposed counterterrorism assurances.
The Taliban harboured Osama Bin Laden and his men while they plotted their attacks on the US. The Taliban has never publicly disavowed Al Qaida. Instead, Al Qaida’s fighters are helping the Taliban resurrect its authoritarian Emirate. As a result, Al Qaida continues to view Afghanistan as a haven for its leadership.
Given the Taliban’s sordid history and ongoing violence, it strains credulity to believe it can be a partner for peace. The American people deserve to see the full text of any agreement the State Department is negotiating, including supposed counterterrorism assurances. If we are putting our security in the hands of the enemy who harboured Al Qaida before the 9/11 attacks, the American people deserve to know why.
As the president correctly noted in August 2017: “A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including Daesh and Al Qaida, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th.”
Indeed, the Daesh remains a global threat and has a prolific branch inside Afghanistan. A Daesh suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding reception in Kabul just this past week, killing dozens of people. This was just the latest horrific attack by the Daesh inside the Afghan capital. The group is already exporting its terror to Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries and may also have ambitions to strike in the West. America’s brave men and women in uniform fight the Daesh, Al Qaida and other terror groups over there so that we are never again forced to confront them at home.
When announcing his strategy for Afghanistan in August 2017, Trump rightly criticised his predecessor’s wartime leadership, saying that “conditions on the ground” and “not arbitrary timetables” should “guide our strategy from now on”.
The president added that “America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out” — a rebuke of Obama’s decision to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Any deal with the Taliban that includes a predetermined schedule for drawing down our forces would only repeat Obama’s mistake.
The US has made significant strides against terrorism in Afghanistan. American troops have saved American lives, thwarting terror plots and hunting down key terrorist leaders who would do America harm. Just days before Trump was elected, US forces killed a senior Al Qaida operative who was plotting against the US from inside Afghanistan. Under Trump’s leadership, other Al Qaida and Daesh figures have been eliminated inside Afghanistan since 2017. America’s security requires that these counterterrorism gains be maintained and secured.
We should not withdraw US forces based on a political timetable that grants concessions to the Taliban and allows the terrorists to maintain safe havens from which they can plan and train for future attacks in the West. We cannot accept a deal that places America’s security in the hands of the Taliban.
Agreeing to such a deal would not be ending a war, it would be losing it — to Al Qaida, the Taliban and the Daesh.
— Washington Post
Liz Cheney is the lone US representative from Wyoming and serves as the House Republican Conference chair. She previously served in the State Department, including as the second-ranking official responsible for US policy in the Middle East.