The latest Taliban statement warning the US of violating a peace deal between them, the killing of 25 people in an attack on a house of worship in Kabul on March 25 and the rejection by a political group to be part of a 21-member peace negotiation team announced by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on March 27 once again prove that the US-Taliban deal is unrealistic and full of contradictions. The peace deal signed in Doha on Feb. 29 outlined a series of commitments from the US and the Taliban related to troop levels, counterterrorism, and the intra-Afghan dialogue. The drawdown of US troops has only re-enlivened terror groups in the region and sharpened the fangs of the Taliban. A few days after the signing of the agreement, the Taliban announced the resumption of normal military operations against Afghan forces. The US responded to this provocation by conducting an airstrike against Taliban fighters in Helmand province. Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of CENTCOM, has said the level of violence carried out by the Taliban after the deal signed was not consistent with a group planning to honor its agreements. Taliban chief negotiator Abbas Stanikzai has openly said that the new agreement only stops the Taliban and US forces from attacking each other, but that the Taliban can continue its fight against the elected Afghan government. Another sticking point has been the fate of as many as 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Taliban officials have said that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's government must release those prisoners. However, Ghani wants to keep a good number of them in prison as a bargaining chip during the intra-Afghan talks. The commitment from the Tabilan about counterterrorism sounds ironic. This is a group which wants to overthrow the elected Afghan government with the help of Pakistan to promote the form of Islam which everybody witnessed them practising during their reign of terror. Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi (MAMN), spokesperson of the breakaway faction of Taliban led by Mullah Mohammad Rasoul (MMR), feels that the deal was neither in favor of Afghanistan nor its citizens, whose interests were not protected by it. He said the Afghans were not aware of the implications of this deal. Describing the Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah as a Pak sponsored group, he noted that their war was not a jihad as it only implements Pakistan's goals in Afghanistan and that it was aimed at bringing the Qatar Taliban to Kabul to replace them as future government. MAMN also appealed to international community, NATO and the US to consider the interests of Afghanistan and its citizens. Sediqullah Rahi, brother of former president of Afghanistan Dr. Najibullah, said that Pakistan is backing the Taliban to topple the elected government in Kabul. Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the 43rd session of UN Human Rights in Geneva, he said the deal is against the will of the people of Afghanistan. The deal also threatens the hard-won freedom of Afghan women, something the US so much espouses for. Hakim Mujahid, a Taliban leader, minced no words that the group will continue to practice many of its gender discriminatory acts. For all these reasons, the deal has been severely criticized not only in Afghanistan but also in the US. While the Pashto media projected it as an agreement by the Qatar-Taliban with America, which was ‘un-Islamic, non-Afghan' and facilitated by Pakistan, many lawmakers of Donald Trump's Republican party expressed "serious concerns" about the agreement. Rep. Liz Cheney said in a statement that "releasing thousands of Taliban fighters, lifting sanctions on international terrorists, and agreeing to withdraw all US forces in exchange for promises from the Taliban, with no disclosed mechanism to verify Taliban compliance, would be reminiscent of the worst aspects of the Obama Iran nuclear deal".
