US-Taliban agreement is critical to Afghanistan’s demise: Report

The US accord with the Taliban, negotiated by former US President Donald Trump and implemented by former US Vice President Joe Biden, was the “single most crucial element” in the fast collapse of Afghanistan’s forces when US soldiers left last year.

As it did in Vietnam decades ago, the US “spent years and billions of dollars training and equipping” the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), only to see them “quickly collapse in the face of far less-equipped insurgencies once US logistical, equipment enabler, and air support were withdrawn,” according to John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, in a “interim” lessons-learned report released yesterday.

The United States appropriated US$146 billion for Afghanistan rebuilding, with approximately US$90 billion spent on establishing the country’s 300,000-strong security force.

Over the course of 20 years, the combat claimed the lives of 2,443 US forces and 1,144 coalition troops.

Sopko has previously stated that considerably more than the reported 66,000 Afghan army and 48,000 civilians were killed.

The US-Taliban agreement, which said that US soldiers would leave provided the Taliban guaranteed to prevent terrorist operations by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, “introduced tremendous uncertainty into the US-Afghan relationship,” according to Sopko.

Many of its contents remain secret, he claimed, “but are believed to be incorporated in secret written and verbal agreements between US and Taliban envoys.”

Even without access to the secret provisions, “many Afghans thought the US-Taliban agreement was an act of bad faith and a signal that the US was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country,” Sopko wrote. “The agreement’s immediate effect was that it weakened” security force morale.

According to Sopko, the US military’s level of support fell after the pact was signed, including a significant drop in airstrikes in 2020 following the greatest level ever the previous year.

“The collapse of the previous government was foreseen and evident” after the agreement “because the administration was entirely dependent on the presence of foreign forces,” Inamullah Samangani, a deputy Taliban spokesman, said by phone.

After two decades of conflict and a disorderly retreat of US and ally soldiers, the insurgent organisation regained Afghanistan in August of last year.

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