What Happened to the Doha Agreement

The Doha Agreement, also known as the Afghanistan Pacification Agreement, is a peace agreement signed by the United States and the Taliban on February 29, 2020 to end the war in Afghanistan. [1] The quadrilateral agreement was signed at the Sheraton Grand Doha in Doha, Qatar, and published on the U.S. State Department website. [2] [best source needed] It was negotiated by Zalmay Khalilzad. The other side: Pompeo, the only U.S. secretary of state who personally met with Taliban officials at the signing ceremony of the agreement in Doha in September 2020, told Fox News that he did not believe the negotiations legitimized the Taliban and that the Trump administration never trusted the group. However, renegotiation would have been difficult. Biden would have had little influence. Like Trump, he wanted to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.

Withdrawing from the deal could have forced him to send back thousands more. The initial timetable of the agreement provided for a 14-month window during which the Taliban and the Afghan government could hold talks that would ideally lead to both a political roadmap for Afghanistan`s future and a permanent ceasefire. Meanwhile, after two decades of occupation, U.S. and allied forces could plan and conduct an orderly withdrawal (the presence of U.S. forces has decreased by about 75 percent since February 2020). However, this plan began to deviate radically from the course from the beginning. The Afghan government, which relies on the support of the United States and NATO, has had little incentive to cooperate. They blocked the start of talks for six months with disputes over the election results, the composition of their negotiating team, and the pace of release of Taliban prisoners (which the US had agreed to as part of the deal). Meanwhile, the Taliban continued their attacks on Afghan security forces, knowing that under the terms of the deal, they could turn off the clock until foreign forces withdraw. In fact, since the signing of the Doha Agreement, the Taliban have seized key military bases and highways and closed cities across the country. Talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are ongoing, but there is little progress towards a viable long-term solution for the country`s future.

Meanwhile, violence continues to rise, with civilians, including prominent women, bearing the brunt of a new barrage of attacks. On the 29th. In February 2020, the United States and the Afghan Taliban signed a peace agreement in Doha, Qatar, aimed at ending the long war in Afghanistan. The deal contains largely the same terms that were agreed in September 2019 but were sunk by President Trump. Essentially, this agreement calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan in exchange for a promise that the Taliban would not allow terrorist groups to operate on Afghan soil. However, the agreement is based on several assumptions that will make its success problematic. The agreement presupposes a functioning Afghan government in Kabul with which negotiations are to take place. The recent Afghan presidential election has indeed darkened the cards instead of clarifying who is in charge. The failure of the presidential elections took place last September, but the process of counting the votes was so confusing and controversial that the winner was not announced until February 18, 2020, nearly five months after the election. The flawed and controversial election led to a controversial and divided government in Kabul, leading to an impasse over who is in charge and making the implementation of the next stage of the peace agreement problematic.

The result could be that the Taliban, with a weak or divided government in Kabul, will be in a stronger position to dictate the terms of an agreement on Afghanistan`s future that is favorable to their views. It is impossible to examine these rounds without taking a look at the context in which these rounds took place. The negotiations took place in November 2001, just two months after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The wounds from these attacks were still fresh on the world stage. The Doha negotiations took place at a time when the world desperately needed unity. The agreement offered a glimmer of hope in a gloomy political climate. On January 20, 2021, during Joe Biden`s inauguration, there were still 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Biden`s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the administration would review the withdrawal agreement. [53] On April 14, 2021, the Biden administration announced that the United States would not withdraw the remaining troops by May 1, but would withdraw by September 11. [54] [55] On July 8, Biden gave an August 31 U.S.

exit date. [56] The Big Picture: The Trump administration has agreed to step down by August 1. Withdraw from the country in May 2021 when the Taliban negotiated a peace deal with the Afghan government and promised to prevent terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State from gaining a foothold. The deal also depends on more difficult negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government over the country`s future. Officials hope the talks will result in 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 eventually end the insurgency of the Taliban, the militant movement that once ruled Afghanistan under a strict Islamic code. While U.S. diplomats had pushed for a ceasefire, they settled for what they called a “reduction in violence” and tested it seven days before it was signed. Officials said the attacks had decreased by 80 percent. .