How Does the US Conspire Against the Taliban through Peace Process?
By: Saifullah Mustanir*

After a short stoppage of US-Taliban peace talks, the US Department of State has once again announced the resumption of the talks with the Taliban. The US Special Envoy for Reconciliation in Afghanistan is headed to Doha, Qatar to formally resume talks with the Taliban. A few months back, the US-Taliban peace deal had neared a final milestone when Donald Trump, in a tweet, happened to temporarily cancel the talks on September 8, 2019.

From the beginning of the talks, the feasible analysis in the ground was that such a stoppage was likely to put pressure on the Taliban, and sooner or later the talk will resume. Indeed, the US is not pursuing real peace in Afghanistan but is conspiring plots against the Taliban movement.

On the other hand, the US has lost control of the war in Afghanistan as this war not only will cause militarily defeat to the US in Afghanistan, but will also reduce its prestige on the international platform. It, therefore, wants to preclude her failure through peace talks in order to secure her political interests.

The following indicators would clearly reveal the means the US would employ to conspire against the Taliban:

1. The US and the entire West see any agreements and treaties as opportunity to deceive and play tricks, while Afghans and all the Muslims see the agreements as values on which they stand. Thus, the US has the intention of playing tricks, while the Taliban are thinking of a real deal and reconciliation.

2. The US has a long history of diplomacy and vast experience in negotiations, but the Taliban neither have experience of political negotiations nor have acquired enough education in this arena.

3. The real power of the Taliban is due to their militancy and fighting because their fighters carry Islamic sentiments based on which they have been fighting the US forces. So, the key secret to Taliban’s success in the ground is their Jihad with the US. For this reason, most people support them. The US, by realizing this fact, is attempting to weaken the Taliban’s military power. Because the US has not been able to do so with the use of military pressure, it is now intending to achieve her goals through political means. Subsequently, if the Taliban concludes the agreement with the US, their popularity will unsurprisingly decrease among the people which would negatively impact the Taliban’s military power, too.

4. American diplomats typically play with words while developing the agreement draft as they cunningly intend to place mystifying words and phrases in the agreement draft that would lead to various interpretation of the text, so that they would exploit them for their advantage in the future.

5. The US has emphasized through the agreement draft that the US will end her military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan, but most of the US military officials, including Donald Trump, have repeatedly addressed that they will secure their military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan even if the agreement is settled. If they secure their military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan, the public will lose their confidence over the Taliban by means of which the Americans will give Afghans the impression that the Taliban have secretly acknowledged the US military or intelligence presence in Afghanistan. It is how the US would make the Afghans lose their trust over the Taliban.

6. The US may admit most of the subject-matters in the agreement, but it will soon deny them when it comes to practical measures to be taken by the US. Or it will plot a conspiracy to abandon the agreement. When the US promises to withdraw its troops in more than one year, the Taliban will not be allowed to use the Afghan soil against the US and its allies. In such a situation, the US could manipulate an explosion in Washington or New York and would later claim that this explosion was plotted in the Afghan soil; thereby, the US must send its forces back to Afghanistan to ensure security for its citizens. In such a case, the agreement will be automatically violated by the US.

7. The US has repeatedly been urging a ceasefire to the Taliban. If the Taliban stops war, there will be divisions within the ranks of the Taliban because different factions of the Taliban are united only because of fighting an anti-American war and persistence of anti-Western thinking. If this happens, the US will gain the opportunity to infiltrate control over the Taliban territories.

8. Through peace talks and agreements, the US is seeking to annihilate the Taliban’s combat-winning thinking. Because the Taliban, especially their military forces, think that they have defeated the US and have won the war. Through the peace process, the US wants to divert the perception of the Taliban into something like ‘everything could not be achieved by force’, so they must sit on the negotiating table and acknowledge a series of conditions.

9. The US intends to distort the image of the Taliban in the eyes of the public by urging them to accept certain prerequisites. Let’s say, the Taliban have to overlook the Emirate and the Emir ul Momineen, and acknowledge the human rights and women’s rights. Even if the Taliban add some constraints (based on the Islamic teachings) on the abovementioned issues, it is still a great flexibility that the Taliban are showing to the US.

10. The US intends to create distance, disparity and even hostility between the Taliban and non-Afghan Mujahedeen. When the US emphasizes that the Afghan soil should not be used against the US and its allies, it explicitly implies that the non-Afghan Mujahedeen should not operate in Afghanistan. As a result, the Taliban are forced to cut ties with al-Qaeda and other armed groups and they should not be allowed to operate in Afghanistan.
So the US is determined to prevent her military failure by defeating the Taliban through the peace talks in order to have them abandon their goals and aspirations, and to ultimately defeat them in the political ground. This mission of the US is about to come off unless the Taliban grasp the rope of Islam by all means, give up the ongoing talks as soon as possible, and continue their fight until the US is totally defeated.

* Director of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Afghanistan
* Written for Ar-Rayah Newspaper – Issue 264