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ldA HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY FROM THE CARAVAN NOTEBOOK

How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan LISA CURTIS

Introduction

The twenty-year US mission in Afghanistan ended in the worst imaginable way possible,

with a poorly planned and executed withdrawal that saw the Taliban immediately roar back

to power. Members of an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization were placed in charge of

the country’s security, while the United States conducted a rushed and chaotic evacuation

that left behind thousands of Afghan allies and created a geopolitical vacuum that its rivals,

namely Russia and China, are poised to fill. There will be countless policy and academic

studies, books, college courses, and debates on how and why the United States failed so

catastrophically in Afghanistan. This essay examines how the poorly negotiated and weak

US-Taliban Doha agreement, concluded during the Trump administration, sealed the fate of

a US mission that cost America tremendous blood and treasure in a country that, contrary

to US president Joe Biden’s assertions, continues to pose a threat to America’s vital national

security interests.

Trump Starts Strong on Afghanistan

Despite his presidential campaign pledges to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan,

then president Donald J. Trump initially took the advice of his top national security and

defense advisors and in August 2017 adopted a new strategy toward Afghanistan aimed

at reversing the deteriorating security situation and ultimately setting the stage for a

peaceful settlement that would protect US interests and advance regional stability. The

strategy included shifting from a time-based to a conditions-based approach to US troop

deployments; expanding authorities for US troops on the ground to aggressively pursue

the enemy; getting tougher on Pakistan for its support to the Taliban; and increasing troop

numbers by around four thousand.1

In his 2017 speech unveiling the new Afghanistan strategy at the Fort Myer military base in

Arlington, Virginia, the former president rightly acknowledged that

the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11, the worst

terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that

country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty

withdrawal would create a vacuum [that] terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would

instantly fill, just as happened before September 11.2

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Lisa Curtis • How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan

Little did anyone know then that this scenario would play out four years later under the

Biden administration. However, the Trump administration’s missteps on peace talks with

the Taliban from 2018 to 2020 also contributed to the ease with which the Taliban retook

the country in August 2021.

Shifts to Troop Withdrawal and Peace Track

By the spring of 2018—less than a year after announcing the ambitious Afghanistan

strategy—President Trump began to lose confidence in his own strategy and signaled

his desire to start withdrawing US troops. Around the same time, US diplomats stepped

up peace efforts, and in June of that year, the first-ever ceasefire between the Afghan

government and the Taliban came into effect. It was short lived, however, lasting just a

few days over the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of

fasting. Although brief, the ceasefire demonstrated grassroots support for peace among

the Afghan population as well as the Taliban rank and file. Building on this positive

momentum, former senior US diplomat for South Asia Alice Wells held direct talks with

Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, in July 2018. Two months later, in September 2018,

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named former US ambassador to Afghanistan and

Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad as the senior representative for Afghanistan reconciliation.

Ambassador Khalilzad brought impressive credentials to the job—regional expertise,

language skills, and deep policy experience working in conflict zones. However, he proved

too eager to close a deal with the Taliban, allowing his single-minded focus to cloud his

judgment on the negative impact of his concessions to the Taliban on the future of the country

and on US fundamental national security interests. It is true that Trump’s repeated statements

about wanting to withdraw US forces from the country undermined Khalilzad’s leverage with

the Taliban; however, instead of conceding almost everything the Taliban requested, the

US negotiator should have considered whether no deal was better than a bad deal.

Trump’s third national security advisor, John Bolton, recognized the dangers of signing a

bad deal with the Taliban and sought to convince the president to back away from what

was shaping up to be less of a “peace” agreement and more of a poorly masked surrender

agreement. A suicide attack in downtown Kabul that killed a US service member and

eleven others on September 5, 2019, led Trump to suspend peace talks with the Taliban

two days later. His tweet announcing the talks’ suspension revealed that he had intended to

invite the Taliban and then Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to Camp David for peace talks.

It is highly doubtful the Taliban would have agreed to meet with Ghani in the United States

in any case—a fact that should have been apparent to the US negotiator.

Sowing Seeds of Surrender under Guise of Peace

There has been repeated criticism of the US military for flawed strategies in Afghanistan,

but the record of US diplomacy in Afghanistan—particularly peace efforts led by

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former US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad over the last three years—have so far escaped scrutiny.

The so-called Afghanistan Papers—confidential documents published by the Washington Post

in December 2019—show how US military leaders often provided rosy assessments of the

military situation or told political leadership that the United States had “turned a corner” in

the fight against the Taliban, when facts showed otherwise. In my time as National Security

Council senior director for South and Central Asia, I also witnessed senior civilian officials and

advisors relying on wishful thinking, rather than data and evidence, to form policy.

The predilection to rely on mistaken beliefs, rather than facts on the ground, defined the peace

talks with the Taliban and the resulting Doha agreement. The first mistake was excluding the

Afghan government from peace talks. When the White House made the decision in July 2018

for the United States to pursue direct talks with the Taliban to jump-start a more comprehensive

peace effort, the intention was to quickly bring the Afghan government into that process.3

No US official at the time envisioned the United States signing a deal with the Taliban

without the involvement of the Afghan government, which is precisely what happened

nineteen months later.

By signing a deal with the Taliban that demanded few concessions, the US negotiator

signaled to the Afghan authorities that the United States was ready to cut and run from

the country and provide international legitimacy to the enemy while doing so. The deal

committed the United States to a full withdrawal of forces within fourteen months in

exchange for vague Taliban pledges to enter peace talks with Afghan authorities and prevent

terrorists from threatening the United States and its allies. This essentially reversed Trump’s

earlier commitment to a conditions-based approach to US troop deployments.

The second mistake was the failure of the US negotiator to calibrate the pace of the

talks to the violence carried out by the Taliban. Trump was right to suspend talks when a

US service member was killed in an attack in downtown Kabul in September 2019. However,

when peace talks resumed three months later, the Taliban conducted a car bombing at

Bagram Airfield on December 11, 2019, killing two Afghans and wounding eighty.4 While

no US service member was killed in the attack, it was a brazen assault on a US facility and

merited another suspension of the talks. Instead, the US negotiator forged ahead with

another round of talks with the Taliban two days later, this time with a request to the

Taliban to merely pause violence for six days before the Doha deal would be signed.

Everything about the way in which the United States negotiated with the Taliban signaled

US desperation for a deal that would cloak its troop withdrawal in the guise of a negotiated

peace settlement. The fact that the United States moved ahead with signing the Doha

deal one month after US citizen Mark Frerichs was taken hostage by militants in Kabul

is further evidence of US desperation. The United States should have never signed a deal

with a group holding an American hostage. It was the ultimate signal of US weakness and

fecklessness.

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Lisa Curtis • How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan

The third mistake was providing the Taliban with practically everything they wanted

without their having to concede much of anything. Consider the decision to force the

Afghan government to release five thousand Taliban prisoners before the Taliban started

talks with the Afghan government. It was clear the Taliban had no interest in a negotiated

settlement but simply wanted their fighters freed, to help them achieve a military path back

to power.

Among the Taliban prisoners released was an Afghan army sergeant named Hekmatullah,

who in 2012 had murdered three Australian soldiers in cold blood while they rested at

their base.56 Australian prime minister Scott Morrison had pleaded with President Trump

not to force President Ghani to release Hekmatullah.7 It was unnecessary to release this

hardened Taliban killer, especially when one of our most trusted allies was opposed to it.

The Trump administration’s hope that Hekmatullah’s release would facilitate peace talks

turned out to be wildly unfounded.

Flimsy Counterterrorism Commitments

Despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad’s repeated

claims throughout 2020 that the Taliban agreed to break ties with al-Qaeda, all evidence

points to the contrary. In a report released in early June 2021, the United Nations said that

large numbers of al-Qaeda fighters and other terrorist elements aligned with the Taliban

were located in various parts of Afghanistan and have celebrated the departure of US and

NATO forces from the country as a victory for global radicalism.8 While the Doha agreement

states that the Taliban will instruct its members not to cooperate with groups that pose a

threat to the United States and its allies, the UN coordinator for the Islamic State, al-Qaeda,

and Taliban Monitoring Team, Edmund Fitton-Brown, said last October that shortly before

the Doha agreement was signed, the Taliban promised al-Qaeda that the two groups would,

in fact, remain allies.9

A careful reading of the Doha agreement shows that the Taliban never pledged to break

ties to al-Qaeda or expel terrorists from the country. After countless hours of negotiations,

the most the US negotiator could extract from the Taliban was a flimsy pledge to “not allow”

al-Qaeda to “use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its

allies.” The language is weak and meaningless. For instance, what happens when al-Qaeda

fails to ask the Taliban for permission to conduct a terrorist strike outside of Afghanistan? It

is likely the Taliban would feign ignorance, arguing they were unaware of the plotting and

training, as they did with the 9/11 attacks. Instead of locking the Taliban into breaking ties

with terrorist groups, the Doha agreement provides the Taliban with plausible deniability in

the event terrorists conduct a strike against the United States from their haven in Afghanistan.

To this day, the Taliban refuses to acknowledge that al-Qaeda carried out the attacks of 9/11.

Furthermore, the Doha agreement lacks clarity on the issue of foreign terrorist fighters and

their ability to reconverge on Afghanistan. The agreement says the Taliban will deal with

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those “seeking asylum or residence in Afghanistan according to international migration

law . . . so that such persons do not pose a threat to the security of the United States and

its allies.” However, the next clause presents a major loophole, saying the Taliban will not

provide official documentation to those seeking to enter the country who pose a threat to the

United States. In other words, the Taliban can simply turn a blind eye to the arrival of foreign

terrorist fighters into Afghanistan and still be within the letter of the Doha agreement.

While it is too early to determine precisely how the Taliban victory in Afghanistan will

impact terrorism trends in the region, the initial indicators are worrisome. The Taliban have

appointed a hardline interim government headed by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund,

who served as foreign minister and then deputy prime minister during Taliban rule

from 1996 to 2001. Akhund also played a critical role in the Quetta Shura and in driving

the Taliban’s military strategy from its safe haven in Pakistan. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the

subject of an FBI Rewards for Justice program that offers $5 million for information

leading to his arrest due to his role in terrorist attacks that killed US citizens, was named

interior minister. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who spent eight years in a Pakistani jail

before the US negotiator requested his release to participate in peace talks, is known to

be more moderate in his approach and was part of a group of insurgents who engaged

with Hamid Karzai when he was Afghan president back in 2009. Baradar’s relegation to

deputy prime minister appears to be a sign that harder-line factions of the Taliban

currently have the upper hand in decision making.

Weakening the Afghan State

Both the Trump and Biden administrations underestimated the degree to which the

Doha agreement had weakened the Afghan state and divided the Afghan political elite.

The way in which the United States handled peace talks in Doha directly contributed

to undermining President Ghani and the Afghan institutions under his charge. The US

undercut Ghani by simultaneously forcing him to make concessions to the Taliban while

the Taliban continued to press ahead with its military campaign to take the country

by force. The Taliban used peace talks to divide Afghan leaders, while at the same time

assassinating Afghan civilians and attacking the Afghan security forces to weaken their

will to keep fighting. It was a recipe for disaster.

In a recent interview, former CIA counterterrorism chief Douglas London explained

how the United States played into the Taliban strategy, which was to increase the level

of violence “while undercutting the Afghan government’s cohesion by negotiating with

and paying off regional opponents.” London concluded that under these circumstances,

it should have been obvious to US observers that the Afghan government could collapse

“within days to weeks.”10

The United States would have been better off negotiating its withdrawal directly with

the Ghani government, something Ghani had proposed in early 2019. In this way, the

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Lisa Curtis • How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan

United States would have avoided demoralizing its Afghan partners even as it pulled

back its support to the Afghan security forces. Instead, the combination of withdrawing

US forces and military support at the same time we were making a political deal with the

enemy of the government meant we ended up handing the country to the Taliban like

a birthday cake. In the words of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, US actions in

Afghanistan “culminated in what amounts to unconditional American withdrawal by the

Biden administration.”11

Afghan political leaders and regional power brokers do not get a pass, however. They allowed

themselves to be divided. The only possible way they could have fended off Taliban military

advances would have been to unify their ranks and fight together against the Taliban.

Several Afghans and Americans blame President Ghani and his leadership style that eschews

consensus building for this failure. However, former president Hamid Karzai and former

chief executive Abdullah also miscalculated badly by naively believing the Taliban would

make them part of an interim government.

Biden Administration Perpetuated Misguided Afghan Policy

The Biden administration had an opportunity to change course on peace talks with the

Taliban when it assumed power in January 2021. President Biden instead chose to stick

with the poorly negotiated Doha agreement and retain its architect, Ambassador Khalilzad.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s letter to President Ghani in March 2021 implicitly laid

blame on Ghani for the failure of peace talks, even as Taliban violence and assassinations

of Afghan civil society leaders continued apace.12 As former national security advisor

General H. R. McMaster explained in an op-ed in March, “Secretary of State [Antony]

Blinken’s leaked letter to President Ghani made clear the new administration has not

ended the grand self-delusion meant to justify an incompetent and unethical policy:

that the Taliban has become less murderous and is disconnected from other terrorist

organizations.”13

President Biden claims he had only two choices on Afghanistan: either stick with the terms

of the Doha agreement, which included US withdrawal by May 1, 2021, or deploy more

US forces to Afghanistan. This is simply not true. He could have retained the approximately

3,500 US troops, which would have been supplemented by around 7,500 NATO troops,

to maintain support for the Afghan security forces and to protect US counterterrorism

interests. This would have required resources and potential risks to US forces, but full

withdrawal also entails risks and requires continued resources for over-the-horizon

counterterrorism operations. Another option would have been to follow through on

troop withdrawal, not according to the Doha agreement but on Biden’s own terms. Such

a withdrawal could have involved pulling out contractor support at a more gradual pace,

coordinating more closely with NATO allies, and continuing robust air support for the

Afghan security forces over a longer period. This may have prevented Afghan morale from

plummeting so rapidly and allowed the Afghan security forces time to regroup.

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Work with Friends, Not Foes

Another mistake of US Afghanistan policy over the last two years has been the diplomatic

focus on working with Russia and China at the expense of coordinating closely with our

UK and European allies. The US negotiator was heavily invested in coordinating the peace

effort with Russia and China over the last two years, despite their lack of interest in

promoting human rights and civil liberties and their ill will toward the United States.

Russian and Chinese officials have recently excoriated the United States for the current

chaos in Afghanistan. European leaders, for their part, are quietly seething about the

United States’ failure to consult them over the last two years on both the peace process

and the troop withdrawal.14

The United States must shift its diplomatic attention to working closely with like-minded

democratic partners, such as the United Kingdom, Europe, and India, which share similar

objectives regarding regional security and counterterrorism, and recognize the importance

of advancing civil liberties and women’s rights to counter the rise of Islamist extremist

ideologies. The US bungling of the situation in Afghanistan has contributed to a significant

decline in goodwill among these nations toward the United States and a loss of faith in

US competence as a global leader. It will take a wholesale shift in US diplomacy from

desperately negotiating and catering to terrorist supporters toward focusing on policies

based on principles of human rights and counterterrorism and implemented from a position

of strength and conviction.

The US negotiator’s decision to work hand in glove with Pakistan must also be questioned.

As the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, 2021 (India’s Independence Day anniversary

and perhaps not by coincidence), Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan said the Taliban

“had broken the shackles of slavery,” while his special assistant tweeted that “the contraption

that the US had pieced together for Afghanistan has crumbled like the proverbial house

of cards.”15

No US administration in the last twenty years has been able to convince Pakistan to

crack down on the Taliban located inside its territory. So long as the Taliban could rely

on Pakistan for refuge and could fall back there to regroup and get medical attention

and move unhindered back and forth across the border, the Taliban were never going to

lose their stamina to fight. Trump, for his part, had suspended US military assistance to

Pakistan in January 2018, with his national security advisor, H. R. McMaster, explaining,

“The relationship can no longer bear the weight of the contradictions in Pakistan’s terrorism

policies.” The aid suspension impacted nearly $2 billion of previously obligated security

assistance for Pakistan. Before the aid suspension, the US had given Pakistan six months

to take decisive action against Taliban and Haqqani Network leaders who had refused to

participate in peace talks. The US had also asked Pakistan to disrupt the operational activity of

these groups, including the plotting of attacks, financial transactions, and cross-border flows

of weapons and fighters—none of which Islamabad did. Even though the aid suspension

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Lisa Curtis • How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan

failed to substantively change Pakistani behavior toward the Taliban, it ensured that

US taxpayer money would no longer fund a foreign military supporting a group linked to

those responsible for 9/11 and continuing to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan.

It’s too late to penalize Pakistan for its support of the Taliban, but US officials should

also learn from their experience of twenty years of Pakistani obstinance and lack of

support for US objectives in Afghanistan. US officials must maintain low expectations of

Pakistan on the counterterrorism front moving forward. It is possible that the United States

could cooperate with Pakistan in targeting the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a group that is

responsible for killing tens of thousands of Pakistanis in terrorist attacks over the last

twelve years. Washington and Islamabad may also find it mutually beneficial to cooperate

against ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan), which poses a threat to both countries. However,

Pakistan’s intelligence service views the Haqqani Network as an asset in Afghanistan and

will never turn on the group. Neither should the US expect Pakistan to help in targeting

al-Qaeda leaders. While Islamabad helped the United States arrest al-Qaeda leaders in the

early years following the 9/11 attacks, that assistance has long since dried up.

While the Taliban are not puppets of Pakistan, the Pakistanis have become adept at gaining

indirect control over them through manipulation. As a member of the US delegation in

peace talks with the Taliban in 2019 and 2020, I witnessed instances of Taliban leaders’

frustration with Pakistan. Now that the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan and are

no longer dependent on their Pakistani sanctuary, the Pakistanis may lose some of their

influence over the group.

Our policy toward India has, likewise, been wrongheaded. In deference to Pakistan, the

United States has avoided working closely with India, and in the end this achieved nothing

for America’s regional objectives. It is long past time to turn that policy around and

recognize that the United States has far more to gain by coordinating with like-minded

democracies that fight terrorists than by focusing its attention on regimes that rely on

terrorist proxies to undermine their neighbors. India shepherded a strong resolution on

Afghanistan when it held the United Nations Security Council presidency in August 2021.

It is currently serving a two-year term as a nonpermanent member of the Security Council,

which rotates the presidency among its fifteen members every month.16 In the 1990s, India

worked closely with Russia and Iran in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Now

that Russia and Iran have forged closer ties with the Taliban, primarily to counter the rise of

ISIS-K, India finds itself more isolated in the region.

Judge Taliban’s Actions, Not Words

Moving forward, President Biden should entrust his Afghanistan policy to those who will

report the facts and not project them through rose-colored glasses. During the Trump years,

diplomats tended to see the Taliban they wanted to see, rather than taking the measure

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of their actions. For instance, there was little attention given to the UN reports previously

mentioned on continued Taliban–al-Qaeda linkages, even though the US negotiator told

Congress the United States was monitoring and verifying the Taliban’s actions toward

terrorist groups.17

Instead of assuming the Taliban’s desire for international assistance and legitimacy will help

moderate its behavior in the future, the Biden team should wait to see whether the Taliban

take concrete actions to prove they have changed. Such actions would include refraining

from revenge killings, opening schools for girls, allowing women to work outside the home,

and taking steps to curb terrorist activities.

During their first week back in power, Taliban leaders went to great lengths to try to show

the world their movement had evolved on issues of governance, terrorism, and women’s rights

since they ruled the country twenty years ago. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid

gave a press conference in Kabul in which he offered amnesty to those who worked for the

government of President Ashraf Ghani, vowing there would be no reprisal killings. He said

women would be allowed to work and study and could participate in society “within the

bounds of Islamic law.”18

Contrary to Mujahid’s early statements, women were later told to stay in their homes until

the Taliban rank and file were instructed how to treat women properly. The United Nations

also reported that the Taliban apparently had lists of people it sought to question and

punish, mostly former police and military officials, and there are numerous accounts of the

Taliban knocking on doors and threatening people.19 There have been other reports of

the Taliban banning girls from attending school beyond the primary level and threatening

female police officers.

There’s good reason to be suspicious of the Taliban claims of amnesty. One week before the

Taliban took over Kabul, they assassinated the state media chief of the Afghan government

as part of a systematic campaign to assassinate government officials, civil society leaders,

human rights activists, and journalists. Furthermore, the Taliban leadership’s claims of

amnesty mean little unless the Taliban rank and file are held to account and punished if

they carry out such killings.

Conclusion

The United States cannot simply wash its hands of Afghanistan or wish away the terrorist

threat that still exists and is likely to grow with the Taliban’s ascendance to power. The

critical issue moving forward is the way in which America engages with a Taliban-controlled

Afghanistan. Such engagement should be based on a commitment to the principles of

freedom and human dignity and with eyes wide open to the continuing terrorist threats

in the region. The United States must continue to provide humanitarian assistance for the

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Lisa Curtis • How the Doha Agreement Guaranteed US Failure in Afghanistan

basic needs of the Afghan people while avoiding rewarding the Taliban with diplomatic

recognition and economic development assistance before they have earned it.

While the Biden administration’s poor handling of the withdrawal has temporarily strained

relations with allies and partners who also invested heavily in the Afghanistan mission,

these nations are unlikely to make sweeping conclusions about the overall reliability

of the United States over the longer term. Since taking office nine months ago, the

Biden administration has invested a great deal in repairing and rejuvenating partnerships

and alliances in Europe and Asia. The mishandling of the situation in Afghanistan also

spans several US administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—and reflects how

Americans across the political spectrum had grown weary of the war. The most effective

way to redeem the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and rebuild trust with US partners is

for the Biden administration to deal with the Taliban from a position of strength and seek

to shape its behavior in close coordination with other like-minded nations.

NOTES

1 White House, “Remarks by President Trump on the Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia,” August 21, 2017, https:// trumpwhitehouse . archives . gov / briefings - statements / remarks - president - trump - strategy - afghanistan - south - asia; David Nakamura and Abby Phillip, “Trump Announces New Strategy for Afghanistan That Calls for a Troop Increase,” Washington Post, August 21, 2017, https:// www . washingtonpost . com / politics / trump - expected - to - announce - small - troop - increase - in - afghanistan - in - prime - time - address / 2017 / 08 / 21 / eb3a513e - 868a - 11e7 - a94f - 3139abce39f5 _ story . html.

2 “Full Transcript and Video: Trump’s Speech on Afghanistan,” New York Times, August 21, 2017, https:// www . nytimes . com / 2017 / 08 / 21 / world / asia / trump - speech - afghanistan . html.

3 Mujib Mashal and Eric Schmitt, “White House Orders Direct Taliban Talks to Jump-Start Afghan Negotiations,” New York Times, July 15, 2018, https:// www . nytimes . com / 2018 / 07 / 15 / world / asia / afghanistan - taliban - direct - negotiations . html.

4 Fahim Abed and Mujib Mashal, “Taliban Attack US Base in Afghanistan as Negotiators Talk Peace,” New York Times, December 11, 2019, https:// www . nytimes . com / 2019 / 12 / 11 / world / asia / Afghanistan - bagram - airfield - attack . html.

5 Jade Gailberger, “Morrison Lobbies Trump to Keep Killer Afghan Sergeant behind Bars,” News . com . au, August 10, 2020, https:// www . news . com . au / national / politics / australia - lobbies - for - afghan - sergeant - to - be - kept - behind - bars / news - story / 29e3509f36ab4675c9275014ab98c422.

6 Hugh Poate, “My Fight to Have My Son’s Killer Executed,” Weekend Australian Magazine, March 26, 2021, https:// www . theaustralian . com . au / weekend - australian - magazine / my - fight - to - have - my - sons - killer - executed - in - afghanistan / news - story / d58f2c9481e51cdf25de5ddee0315ce8.

7 Andrew Greene, “Afghan Soldier Hekmatullah, Who Killed Three Australians, Flown to Qatar ahead of Peace Talks with Taliban,” ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), September 10, 2020, https:// www . abc . net . au / news / 2020 - 09 - 11 / hekmatullah - transferred - to - qatar - taliban - peace - talks - australia / 12653524.

8 United Nations Security Council, “Twelfth Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team Submitted Pursuant to Resolution 2557 (2020) Concerning the Taliban and Other Associated Individuals and Entities Constituting a Threat to the Peace, Stability and Security of Afghanistan,” June 1, 2021, 3, https:// www . undocs . org / en / S / 2021 / 486.

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The publisher has made this work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 International license. To view a copy of this license, visit https:// creativecommons . org / licenses / by - nd / 4 . 0.

The views expressed in this essay are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

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27 26 25 24 23 22 21 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

9 Secunder Kermani, “Al-Qaeda Still Heavily Embedded with Taliban in Afghanistan, UN Official Warns,” BBC News, October 29, 2020, https:// www . bbc . com / news / world - asia - 54711452.

10 Rezaul H. Laskar, “India Has Good Reason to Worry over Taliban’s Rise: Ex-CIA Official,” Hindustan Times, September 6, 2021, https:// www . hindustantimes . com / world - news / taliban - rise - a - concern - for - india - ex - cia - hand - 101630869550332 . html.

11 Henry Kissinger, “The Future of American Power: Henry Kissinger on Why America Failed in Afghanistan,” The Economist, August 25, 2021, https:// www . economist . com / by - invitation / 2021 / 08 / 25 / henry - kissinger - on - why - america - failed - in - afghanistan.

12 Blinken to Ghani, February 28, 2021, https:// tolonews . com / pdf / 02 . pdf.

13 H. R. McMaster, “Afghanistan Is America’s Longest War—It’s Time for the Delusion about It to End,” Fox News, March 22, 2021, https:// www . foxnews . com / opinion / afghanistan - america - longest - war - h - r - mcmaster.

14 Mark Lowen, “Afghanistan Crisis: How Europe’s Relationship with Joe Biden Turned Sour,” BBC News, September 3, 2021, https:// www . bbc . com / news / world - europe - 58416848.

15 Ishaan Tharoor, “Pakistan’s Hand in the Taliban’s Victory,” Washington Post, August 18, 2021, https:// www . washingtonpost . com / world / 2021 / 08 / 18 / pakistan - hand - taliban - victory.

16 “India’s Presidency of UNSC Ends with ‘Substantive’ Outcomes on Key Global Issues,” The Hindu, September 1, 2021, https:// www . thehindu . com / news / national / indias - presidency - of - unsc - ends - with - substantive - outcomes - on - key - global - issues / article36219690 . ece.

17 United Nations Security Council, “Twelfth Report.”

18 Zeerak Khurram, Saphora Smith, Yuliya Talmazan, and Gabe Joselow, “Taliban Spokesman Says US Will Not Be Harmed from Afghan Soil,” NBC News, August 17, 2021, https:// www . nbcnews . com / news / world / taliban - announces - amnesty - urges - women - join - government - n1276945.

19 “Protests Spread to Kabul as Taliban Struggle to Govern,” New York Times, updated August 30, 2021, https:// www . nytimes . com / live / 2021 / 08 / 19 / world / taliban - afghanistan - news#the - taliban - intensify - a - search - for - people - who - worked - with - us - and - british - forces - a - un - document - says.

Author Name • Essay Title

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About The Caravan Notebook

The Caravan Notebook is a platform for essays and podcasts that offer commentary on a variety of subjects, ranging from current events to cultural trends, and including topics that are too local or too specific from the larger questions addressed quarterly in The Caravan.

We draw on the membership of Hoover’s Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World, and on colleagues elsewhere who work that same political and cultural landscape. Russell Berman chairs the project from which this effort originates.

The Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World

The Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World studies a range of political, social, and cultural problems in the region with the goal of informing American foreign policy choices and the wider public discussion. The working group draws on the intellectual resources of an array of scholars and practitioners from within the United States and abroad to foster the pursuit of modernity, to combat Islamist radicalism, to promote human flourishing, and to spread the rule of law, human rights, and democratic governance in Islamic lands—developments that are critical to the very order of the international system. The working group is chaired by Hoover fellow Russell Berman.

For more information about this Hoover Institution Working Group, visit us online at www . hoover . org / research - teams / middle - east - and - islamic - world - working - group.

About the Author

LISA CURTIS Lisa Curtis is senior fellow and

director of the Indo-Pacific Security

Program at the Center for a New

American Security. She is a foreign

policy and national security expert

with over twenty years of service

in the US government, including

most recently (2017–21) as deputy

assistant to the president and

National Security Council senior

director for South and Central Asia.

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