On September 7th, President Trump sent out a tweet saying that he had cancelled peace talks with the Taliban that were to be held two days later at Camp David. This came as a shock to the American people, many were unsettled by the fact that there could have been a meeting between these two parties on continental United States soil. In addition, these talks would have come just before the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11, which marked the start of the war in Afghanistan.
They were cancelled because of an attack that happened in Kabul that resulted in the loss of an American soldier. When the President learned of this, he was quick to cancel the meeting. If the meeting were to have happened, the United States was willing to make the offer of withdrawing 5,400 out of 14,000 US troops within 20 weeks, in exchange for a guarantee from the Taliban that Afghanistan would no longer be used as a base for terrorism. One problem with this is that Afghanistan was not invited to the peace talks, meaning that they wouldn’t have been able to provide input from their point of view.
One of Trump’s motives for having peace talks is to fulfill on a 2016 campaign promise of ending the war. As we are approaching an election year, he will probably be attempting to close on as many promises from 2016 as possible. This would show potential supporters that he is able to follow through and effect permanent change on a global level.
The Taliban has said that they will not consider joining peace talks that involve Afghanistan until the US agrees on a set time period for complete removal of military personnel. Afghan leaders are concerned that the removal of US troops would lead to another period of the Taliban being in power such as the 1996-2001 rule that saw a brutal military rule that was heavily influenced by religious law. This could be a viable future, as the Taliban now control more territory than they had when 9/11 happened, which does not bode well for the possibility of a fully functioning and legitimate Afghan government.
The push towards peace is a good one, but the parties involved need to be able to come together to create a path to peace that will work in the long term. Death tolls are rising, with 16 American deaths this year, the numbers of Americans killed has risen to beyond 2,300. In addition, almost 40,000 Afghan citizens have been killed since 2001. In order to end the fighting, peace talks need to be made, not cancelled.