The Taliban said Monday they were resuming offensive operations against Afghan security forces, ending the partial truce that preceded the signing of a deal between the insurgents and Washington.
The declaration comes only a day after President Ashraf Ghani said he would continue the partial truce at least until talks between Afghan officials and the Taliban kick-off, supposedly on March 10.
Of course, the Taliban only needed the signing of the deal to proclaim America's defeat:
“Even if we don’t say that the U.S. is defeated in Afghanistan, it is an open secret now that they are defeated,” said Anas Haqqani, a senior member of the Haqqani network, considered to be the most formidable of the Taliban’s fighting forces[.]
So perhaps the resumption of Taliban attacks was a given with only the timing in doubt.
Although keep in mind that the deal isn't a defeat just because the Taliban say it is. Of course they want people to believe that. But today after a ceasefire in 1953 that has led to the current status of just a single American ground combat brigade in South Korea, who would say that America was defeated in the Korean War?
Still, our Afghanistan objectives have declined a lot over two decades. I do worry that the Afghanistan deal is only intended to provide a decent interval between our departure and a Taliban victory. We have to do what it takes--like a stretched out and staged withdrawal as we build Afghan capabilities--to avoid our Afghan allies believing that. The act of withdrawing is inherently unsettling to those we leave behind to carry on.
This at least is good news as far as being able to fight and support our allies even as we plan to get out:
A new network of Special Operations forces will serve as the backbone of a smaller U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, hunting Islamic State fighters as the United States withdraws and providing firepower against the Taliban if a peace agreement with the group crumbles, military officials said.
The network was established as Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepared to shrink the number of U.S. troops last summer while the Trump administration negotiated a U.S. troop withdrawal deal with the Taliban. The idea was to improve coordination between coalition and Afghan forces in a way that would still be possible if the number of U.S. service members shrinks, relying on WhatsApp to share information.
The force is designed to “withstand any change in policy, whatever that may be, or a change in any conditions on the ground,” said a senior U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations. The force will work with coalition partners, “but the core of it will obviously be U.S.,” the official said.
Bonus description of our air power assisting Afghan forces on the offensive.
This problem of reassuring allies is what happens when you replace "victory" with an "exit strategy" as your goal for fighting.
This perhaps obsolete Pentagon briefing says our ultimate withdrawal is "conditions based." I assume Taliban attacks violate at least one of those conditions. Well, I hope they do.
Perhaps to remind the Taliban that we did not sign a surrender document, American special forces should capture the entire Taliban negotiating team in Qatar and send them to Guantanamo Bay; and carpet bomb whatever Taliban targets we can find in Afghanistan. We at least resumed air strikes in support of Afghan security forces.
If the Afghan government and its allies in the provinces have enough outside support to defeat the Taliban, eventually nobody will think this deal was a defeat. But a lot goes into that "if" and I don't know if we will carry that out.
