FINALLY, THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME LIGHT at the end of the long, dark tunnel in Afghanistan. The United States and the Taliban signed a pact on February 29, called “the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan”, after nearly two decades of continuous fighting and bloodshed.
The agreement, in which the U.S. made most of the concessions and the Taliban hardly any, is being interpreted by experts as the prelude to a military defeat on the scale suffered by the U.S. in Vietnam. Most observers of the region say it is only a matter of time before regime change happens in Kabul.
The Taliban has already started celebrating. Its media spokesman said the agreement was a historic landmark symbolising the “defeat of the arrogance of the White House”. The signing ceremony in Doha, Qatar, was attended by representatives from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Tajikistan.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama, while raising troop strength in Afghanistan to over 100,000, had described the war there as the “good war” that his country could not afford to lose. The U.S. spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan in the pursuit of the “good war”, in which some 3,550 soldiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) died, 2,400 of them from the U.S. More than 50,000 Afghan soldiers and 100,000 civilians also perished after the U.S. invasion two decades ago. Meanwhile, most Afghans continue to live in poverty. Pakistan played an important role in bringing all the factions of the Taliban to the negotiating table. Its role has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. and the Taliban. Pakistani Foreign Minister ShahMahmoodQureshi was present in Doha for the signing ceremony.
This story is from the March 27, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the March 27, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.
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