The US decision to delay the pullout from Afghanistan kept the war going longer, and that’s proven bad news for the Afghan government, which has faced precipitous losses in several provinces from continued Taliban offensives.
26 outposts and bases in four provinces have fallen just in the month of May. That’s a lot of territory, and has given the Taliban de facto control of four more district centers, as well as huge caches of weapons and ammunition looted from the sites.
Continued territory changing hands is going to put the Taliban in a strong position in the upcoming talks, and that momentum puts them in a good position on agreeing to terms for talks in the first place.
Had the US kept its May 1 pullout date, the peace talks and presumptive ceasefire that would come with it would’ve been in place before all of these losses. With unconfirmed reports that the US is considering withdrawing earlier than the new September 11 date, potentially leaving some time in July, it may be that they’re worried that by September the losses could be much worse.
I am not sure these are losses. These may be agreed upon moves. It is typical of a decentralized, clan based state structures to have security divided across clan territory. If government positions were placed in what would be future clan jurisdiction, it is better to have them dismantled sooner.
I believe that deals have been already made between government and clans. After all, all members of the government belong to clans. US played one clan vs other, and against yet another. The games got stale, and Afghans eventually just waited US out.
US never really decided what to do with Afghanistan. Other than wanted to be there. It appeared tantalizing to be so close to Russia and China, and have all those once unstable Central Asian countries at the fingertips. So close, yet so far away.
Many things happened to make Afghanistan geopolitica dead end. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and now Kirgyzstan, all well integrated within SCO. They are also regionally active with China. Russia is also militarily present in all but Uzbekistan, as all others are members of Russian security organization , CSTO.
But just as important, Pakistan has undergone manor transformation and has become a country unlikely to become again a hub of militant activities. And most important, since June 2017 Saudi Arabia ceased to be the partner in proxy forces building, financing and ideologically structuring.
This left US without an important tool in the region. Now we just have proxy HTS in Idlib and are promoting the last of the Al-Qaeda. UAE is not an adequate substitute fir former Saudi role, Saudi Arabia has China as its biggest buyer of oil.
Afghanistan is now the least of US problems.
Middle East. specifically Israel will draw US into logical unravelling of control over Palestinian issue.
Part of the problem was that the United States didn’t understand clan politics, didn’t want to understand clan politics, couldn’t even try to play clan politics without torking off its real constituents in the West (the feminists, the environmentalists, the Good Government types, the gay rights people, the Evangelicals, the NGOs, the arms manufacturers, etc.) and consequently wasn’t very good at clan politics.