Talking to Taliban is the only way forward? CSS Current Affairs
Trump could still upend this framework and opt for a unilateral withdrawal and aid cuts. Such a decision could well lead to the collapse of the Afghan government, a scenario that recalls the end of the Vietnam War. The Paris Peace Accords, reached in January 1973, provided for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam within 60 days. Although they included provisions for a cease-fire and a political settlement, these were to take place after U.S. forces left. The United States failed to make its withdrawal conditional on either, and so neither happened. The South Vietnamese government nonetheless survived for over two years. Only in 1975, when a war-weary U.S. Congress cut off all military and financial aid to South Vietnam, did Saigon finally fall.
A similar story played out after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Under the Geneva Accords of 1988—negotiated by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and the United States—all Soviet troops would withdraw from Afghanistan by February 1989, and Pakistan and the United States would stop providing aid to the mujahidin based in Pakistan by May 1988. Yet the accords made no provision for a political settlement within Afghanistan. When the deadline for cutting off aid to the mujahideen arrived, the United States and Pakistan asserted that they would continue to support the mujahideen for as long as the Soviet Union supported the Afghan state. The Soviets withdrew on schedule anyway. Over two years later, in September 1991, the United States and a collapsing Soviet Union agreed to stop providing aid to their clients. The Soviet Union collapsed in December. Short of money to pay his armed forces and feed Afghanistan’s urban population, Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah resigned and fled in April 1992. According to a UN peace plan, an interim government formed abroad was meant to replace him, but fighters inside Afghanistan had no stake in that agreement. The country collapsed into civil war.
Such a scenario could play out again in Afghanistan. The United States could catastrophically reduce its military and financial assistance with or without negotiations—but the negotiations provide the only path to stability after the inevitable withdrawal. Trump must allow his negotiators and the Afghan government to take the time they need to reach a deal that links the implementation of the withdrawal agreement to an Afghan political settlement, and he must maintain the flow of aid needed to keep the Afghan state functioning.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
Tag:Afghanistan, America, American Defeat, BPSC, CSS, FPSC, KPPSC, NATO, Negotiations, Pakistan, PMS, PPSC, SPSC