Officials from the Taliban’s leadership council, the Rehbari Shura, say that they intend to review and study all of the language of the draft peace agreement with the United States, and are waiting on that to finalize the pact.
This mirrors the US intention to let Trump make a final decision before
finalization. The Taliban leaders say they don’t expect any major
changes to be sought by the shura, and that the draft deal is more or
less set.
The shura’s leadership say they have been kept appraised of much of the
deal while in contact with the negotiation team in Doha. It does not
appear that they have a final copy of the draft deal in hand yet,
however.
One issue that has changed is that the Taliban sought a nine month US
withdrawal, while the US had sought at least 18 months. The compromise
appears to have landed somewhere in the middle, but with over 5,000 US
troops withdrawing in five months.
From what little we know, this sounds like a mutually-beneficial deal. We could and should have reached it years ago. Hopefully it gets finalized and implemented smoothly.
We don’t know enough to say that. We can hope. But we are hoping against the pattern of those who are running the show. Worse, we are relying on the weak reed of Trump to stand against the power of status quo war.
Wow; after getting Viet Nam or may be worse spanking, Americans are saving their ass by running from Afghanistan but these War Criminal Neo Cons; War Lords will never learn the lesson and after election, President Trump will start another misadventure by starting An Other Terrorism War.