Doha deal and Biden

The administration of new US President Joe Biden has announced that it will review the peace deal his predecessor, Donald Trump, agreed to with the Afghan Taliban. While the decision has caught the eye of analysts and decision-makers in several countries, we believe that Biden will not pull a Trumpian move and tear up the deal. This is based on the simple fact that Biden has shown a long history of sanity and maturity, both political and otherwise. More likely is that Biden’s team will try to renegotiate certain aspects of the deal, such as the complete withdrawal of US troops, or trade concessions with the Taliban, and possibly, the Afghan government.

And that should not be a surprise to anyone. No senior US military commanders were on board with a withdrawal at the schedule set by team Trump, not because they wanted to persist with America’s longest-ever war, but because they wanted to withdraw in an organised manner. It is also well-understood that some US quarters believe that the Taliban are not following up on their commitments. Trump could not have cared less about this — bringing the troops home was an election goal for him, not a foreign policy one — but a rational president will.

Again, this is not a deal-breaker. The Afghan government has also failed to meet its commitments to the US, and forcing a partial tripartite negotiation may actually help all sides achieve a better deal. Also, the fact that Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief US negotiator on Afghanistan, is being kept on reflects that team Biden would only want tweaks, not a rewriting of the deal. Anthony Blinken, who should be confirmed as Secretary of State soon, has also noted that the main US concern is ensuring there is no resurgence of terrorism, either due to a haphazard withdrawal or the Taliban welching on the deal.

That, if nothing else, is evidence enough that Team Biden has no intention of abandoning the deal or stopping backing the Doha talks. Getting to the deal’s main goal — peace — is important enough to allow for timeline tweaking. The variable, however, will be the Taliban and the Afghan government’s willingness to accept those tweaks.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2021.

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