Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and essayist, expert on the Taliban movement. He is the author of numerous books, including The Return of the Taliban (Delavilla, 2009), in which he notably invited the United States to review their strategy, on pain of losing the war.
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Why will it have taken twenty years of war in Afghanistan for Washington, under the presidency of Donald Trump, to agree to sign an agreement with the Taliban, in Doha, on February 29, 2020?
Mr. Trump’s only goal was to be able to announce the withdrawal of troops during the 2020 US presidential campaign. He ignored neither US interests nor Afghan interests, and set no strategy. The United States had already tried to make peace several times. In 2009, Barack Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. [brutalement décédé en décembre 2010], who spent a lot of energy to advance peace. But he was too isolated within the American administration.
Today, Joe Biden is taking a huge risk by accelerating the total withdrawal of the troops. He is betting on an exit negotiated with the Taliban. Gold, This is only a hypothesis: since the summer of 2018, the insurgents have never shown the will to achieve peace. They got a lot, without bringing anything in return. We do not know what they want in terms of the political system, education, health, external relations and what will be the place of women in society. It is very disturbing.
How were Americans received by the Afghan people in 2001?
Their arrival and that of the NGOs had given rise to immense hopes for peace. After five years of rule, the Taliban could no longer count on popular support. The Afghans as a whole longed to be freed from their yoke. As for the non-Pashtun groups, they had never ceased to resist. Since 1993, Afghanistan had moreover become the scene of an ethnic war opposing the Pashtuns on the one hand, to the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara on the other, with logistical and political support from foreign countries in each camp. This explains, along with American military superiority, why the Taliban lost so quickly at the end of 2001.
Should Washington have invited the Taliban from the end of 2001 to participate in the Bonn agreement supposed to prepare for the democratic transition?
At the time, the participation of the Taliban in the work of rebuilding the country was unthinkable for the United States. They even refused the proposal of some Taliban leaders to surrender to the new master of Kabul, Hamid Karzai. [désigné, à Bonn, chef de l’autorité intérimaire]. According to Washington, the Taliban were defeated and had to surrender to the Americans, to be imprisoned or sentenced to death.
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