Trump’s "peace talks" with the Taliban have ended in violence and acrimony

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has undergone a miraculous reversal of fortune in the lead up to his bid for re-election on September 28. The death of a so-called “peace process” – a year of talks between the administration of Donald J. Trump and the leadership of the terrorist Taliban group – has seen Ghani return from a frosty exile on the periphery of political relevance to become, once more, the man most likely to win the presidency for another five years.

The talks were led by an old university chum of Ghani’s, Trump’s Afghan-born peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, an ambitious man whose aspirations might have met their limit. Throughout his shuttle diplomacy, Zal (as he is known) assiduously ensured that Ghani was barred from participating in the process, and spread doubt that the presidential election, which is opposed by the Taliban who despise Ghani as a selected, rather than elected US puppet, would even go ahead.

This despite 18 years of US-led international involvement in attempting to raise Afghanistan, phoenix-like, from the autarkic ashes of five years of Taliban rule, into a soaring success story of development and democracy amid an ocean of dysfunctional demagoguery. With Iran to the west, Pakistan and China to the east, Russia and its corrupt satellite states-ending-in-stan to the north, the pressure was always going to be intense. In recent years, Afghanistan has become a proxy battleground for the regional ratbags, with Pakistan pitted again India, Iran against Saudi Arabia, and China, as usual, eyeing whatever commercial prizes it can grab and exploit.

Throw in a dozen or more terrorist groups — including the Islamic State, whose viciousness has led to a “brain drain” of Taliban fighters eager to join its brutal but better-paid ranks – and it becomes clear why Afghanistan’s people have become so exhausted by war and death that they’d accept almost any settlement as long as it brought peace. Almost any, that is, but Zal’s. Afghans have a lot to lose from a Taliban return to power. Women, journalists, and defenders of civil and human rights are just the obvious. At no stage during his negotiations was Zal able to say he had secured guarantees from his turbaned interlocutors that they would respect Afghanistan’s post-2001 Constitution. His focus appeared to be on clearing a run to the exits for American troops — with a small contingent of anti-terrorist combat troops remaining — so Trump the Deal Maker could claim to have done what his predecessor could not by ending America’s longest war. For his part, it’s been said, Zal wanted to be Secretary of State.

The Taliban’s hubris came back to bite them, and now it’s Zal out in the cold – recalled to Washington and his Twitter feed silent – and Ghani looking once more like the hot ticket he’d previously been, as incumbent, for September 28.

Despite a sophisticated campaign by the Taliban to mark each round of talks with a spike in violence – suicide bombings and complex attacks on government and international targets, and even the temporary takeover of the vulnerable northern city of Kunduz – Zal had persisted in his pursuit of peace at any price. Until September 5, when a Taliban attack in Kabul claimed the life of a US soldier. It also killed a Romanian soldier and almost a dozen Afghans. But it was that American death that incensed Trump. He called off what he said was a planned visit by Taliban leaders, and Ghani, to Camp David for their first face-to-face talks. The “peace process” was now dead, he said. And the Taliban, in turn, swore to make life hell for Afghans as they prepare to vote.

Thus it ever was for Afghans, exhausted and traumatised by 40 years of conflict that began with the 1979 invasion by the former Soviet Union, and continues to blight every minute of every day of their lives. Ghani has hardly been the best partner to the international community, having failed to deal with the massive corruption that has seen far too much of the billions of taxpayer dollars that keep the country barely viable disappear into the numbered bank accounts of warlords and drug traffickers.

Perhaps the best that can be said is that Trump’s attempt to appease the group that enabled the 9-11 attacks has ended as it always would – in violence and acrimony. And perhaps Ghani has learned, as a quick glance at the history of South Vietnam would teach him, that even his best friends will stop taking his calls if there’s no quid pro quo.