After a series of stops and starts, the implementation of the prisoners exchange agreed between the US and Taliban in the peace deal signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, 2020 seems about to begin. The Taliban had originally planned to send a 10-member team to monitor and help identify the 5,000 prisoners held by the Afghan government and scheduled for release. But the Covid-19 pandemic forced a reduction of the team to just three members. There is no word whether the team travelled from Doha (unlikely given the stoppage of international flights and despite the assistance of the International Red Cross) or from within Afghanistan. Whatever the case, this is the first time a Taliban team has surfaced in Kabul since the November 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government by the invading US forces. There was no word from the Afghan government on the team's arrival in Kabul, which in itself speaks volumes. It may be recalled that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent meetings in Kabul with both rival claimants to the Afghan presidency, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, failed to persuade them to work together. This so incensed the US that Pompeo announced an immediate aid cut of $ one billion, with more to come if the two rivals did not reconcile. The aid blow seems to have been enough to cleave through all the roadblocks to the prisoner exchange, including Ashraf Ghani's proposed staggered release (which the Taliban rejected and on which Washington maintained a studied silence), a divided administration in Kabul, and the so far Taliban refusal to talk to or deal with the Afghan government. While the Taliban team basks in a luxury hotel in Kabul, the issue of the 21-member negotiating team put forward for the intra-Afghan dialogue by the Afghan government also enjoyed a new found, rare, consensus. Abdullah Abdullah in a series of tweets put his weight behind the negotiating team. Mike Pompeo too spoke positively of it by calling it fairly broad and inclusive. And most importantly, the Taliban were expected to soften their stance of rejection of the Afghan government negotiating team now that even Abdullah Abdullah has endorsed it (implying it is a team carrying the consensus of the Afghan ruling structure as a whole) and the prisoner exchange is poised to begin. What is not clear so far however is how and when the 1,000 prisoners held by the Taliban will be released, who will monitor that process, etc, i.e. the reciprocal part of the prisoner exchange agreement.
The US has learnt the hard way the cost in resources and human lives (Afghan more than American) of invading and occupying a country like Afghanistan, with a well deserved reputation as the 'graveyard of empires', and then pursuing the hope-triumphs-over-reality shibboleth of so-called 'nation building'. In Afghanistan as elsewhere, this goal has been discredited on the grounds of the impossibility of replacing an organic development of nationhood with an externally imposed wish list. But for Washington to arrive at this truth that has been staring the US and its western allies invested in Afghanistan in the face for years, much blood and lucre had to be wasted before wisdom dawned. To those who argue the US had no other choice after 9/11 and the refusal of the Taliban government to cooperate in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, one can only say this was, with hindsight, perhaps the least wise course, fuelled by a desire for revenge more than strategic insight. Unfortunately, the price to be paid does not end there. It is obvious to all but the purblind or those with a vested interest in turning a blind eye to the likely future of Afghanistan that the Taliban are biding their time till the US forces leave before they roll over the Afghan government that has proved incapable of standing on its own against the Taliban. The 'peace' process therefore is little more than a face-saving effort to pull Washington's chestnuts out of the Afghan fire, allow a tissue-thin veil for the ignominious defeat and retreat of the US, and leave the long suffering Afghan people to their uncertain fate. Pakistan too would have to be cautious against the Pakistani Taliban finding succour and support from a future exclusively Taliban government in Kabul.