The Doha Agreement, by all standards, was strange. Signed on the 29th February amidst a rapidly escalating outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the Agreement was foundational in shaping the Afghanistan of today. Yet is signature on the leap day of 2020 was only the beginning of the Agreement’s series of eyebrow-raising peculiarities. It was, per the cliche, the befittingly unusual cherry atop a thoroughly unusual cake.
It has been five years since 29th February 2020, when Afghan-born US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad sat beside Taliban cofounder Mullah Abdul Ghani Bradar in front of the world to sign the Doha Agreement. The three-page document committed the US to finally withdrawing from Afghanistan after a two-decade occupation that started in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. In exchange, the Taliban made the pledge, ever since a cornerstone of its bland public communications, to not allow attacks to be launched from Afghan territory by its members and ‘other individuals and groups, including Al-Qa’ida.’ The Agreement, conspicuously, shied away from describing these groups as terrorists.
A cursory look at the Agreement’s name suffices to lay bare the tension in its very essence. It was as odd as the context from which it emerged, but, whatever its flaws, it would be the ‘Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America,’ which committed the US, on paper and in front of the world, to withdrawing from Afghanistan. Two long and failed decades of occupation would finally come to an end.
A dissection of the Agreement lays bare the consistent friction in which it had been conceived. That tension was fundamentally between what the Agreement aimed to be de jure versus what it de facto was. The Doha Agreement was signed between a state and non-state actor. It was not, therefore, an international agreement: conventionally signed between states. Its signatories were the United States of America and the Taliban, albeit the latter’s stubborn and partially substantiated pretence to statehood was manifest in the Agreement. Yet the sheer distance between the United States in the Western hemisphere and the Taliban in Central/South Asia, made the Agreement, in practice if not legal theory, one that was international. On paper, the Agreement was a bilateral deal. In reality, it was only possible through the United States firstly excluding and thereafter negotiating on behalf of a third party: the American-installed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which was internationally recognised as Afghanistan’s government.
A Flawed Agreement
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was effectively a triumvirate growingly besieged in Kabul. Consisting of President Ashraf Ghani, Vice President Amrullah Saleh and National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, the triumvirate had, at the Taliban’s insistence, been humiliatingly excluded from the preliminary negotiations and the Agreement alike. A prisoner exchange between Kabul and the Taliban was also stipulated which would, per the Agreement, pave the way for intra-Afghan negotiations. By firstly excluding Kabul and thereafter negotiating a prisoner exchange on its behalf, Washington had added injury to the insult it had subjected Kabul to, on a global stage.
Therein lay the document’s impotence. Domestic negotiations would have been challenging enough given the mutual distrust arising from four decades of incessant conflict that had torn apart the country’s socio-political fabric. Added to the mixture was an undeniably perverse incentive for Ghani to sabotage any intra-Afghan talks given his subjection to American pressure into complying with an Agreement which had excluded him, and looked steadily to him as a zero-sum game to preserve his own power. Further complicating the story was that whilst the Agreement mandated negotiations, there was virtually no mechanism to enforce these. Despite initially half-hearted attempts on all sides, the talks’ growing redundance became apparent as the Taliban ramped up military activity across the country.
The desire to withdraw from Afghanistan was not unique to the-then first Trump administration. Trump was, however, willing to break from his predecessors in another key area. Whilst the Obama administration had signalled its willingness to negotiate with the Taliban, it had also ascribed conditionality to such talks, underscoring that these could only be as part of a wider intra-Afghan settlement. Such a settlement, it was hoped, would provide a political springboard for the graceful exit Washington was increasingly eager for. More importantly, it would also vindicate the US’ wider political project by legitimising Washington’s client regime in Kabul, whom the Taliban had made a point of not recognising and thereby steadfastly to negotiate directly with. Trump’s assumption of office initially saw an escalation of the conflict, egged on by National Security Advisor H.R McMaster, in a last ditch attempt to militarily claw back what was by this point the Taliban’s palpably superior political ground. Trump’s effort would be the last failed attempt of seizing military victory from the tightening jaws of political defeat.
Success in their insurgency had already emboldened the Taliban. So too had their increasing political success through their widening relations with neighbouring and regional countries beyond Pakistan, including Russia, China, the Central Asian Republics, and Iran. More resolute than ever in their refusal to engage with Ghani’s regime, which they referred derisively to as the ‘Kabul Administration’, the Taliban had compelled Trump to begin direct negotiations with them, in Kabul’s absence. Ghani, excluded from these talks, served as the sacrificial lamb for a brief Trump-Taliban camaraderie that saw President Trump even praise the Taliban as ‘really smart’ and ‘good fighters’. Trump agreeing to negotiations with the Taliban based on the latter’s terms marked from the beginning an unmistakable capitulation. It would only rouse the Taliban’s morale further.
Not long thereafter, the Agreement, with the aim of ending the US’ occupation on which Ghani was so hopelessly reliant, was signed. The Agreement only hastened the inevitable collapse of the twin pillars of occupation and Ghani’s regime. The chain of events that reached its climax on 15th August 2021. After a stunning eleven day blitzkrieg in which they overran the rest of Afghanistan, the Taliban marched into Kabul. The US’ withdrawal, stipulated by the Doha Agreement, was not even complete.
The Triumph of Jihad
The Doha Agreement marked, in one key area at least, the end of a monumental chapter of modern history itself. In committing the US to ending its occupation of Afghanistan, the Doha Agreement was drawing the curtain on the key ingredient of the Global War on Terror, launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The War was inaugurated by the Taliban’s overthrow via invasion. Afghanistan’s two-decade long occupation, therefore, was wed to a wider War: a War whose declared remit was global from its birth. The global campaign was unpopular soon, and the intra-American fissures it induced still shape US politics to the present day.
The US’ capitulation to the Taliban, however, was staggering. It had at once marginalised its own client regime and even foregone its foreign policy staple of describing ‘groups like Al-Qa’ida’ as terrorists. There was little question that Washington’s withdrawal was motivated by the sheer costs of a war in which it was embroiled and could not win. That war, in turn, was a Taliban-waged jihad: a concept which, in the 80s, the US had once sought to exploit. It was also a concept whose elimination was effectively an enshrined goal of the post 9/11 world. Where the War on Terror had effectively aimed to forever annihilate jihad’s potency as a politico-military concept, the Doha Agreement only legitimised it.
The US’ occupation was not ended by activism, the weight of public opinion, or savvy public communications. It was defeated by a Taliban jihad deeply involved in an international drug trade and which killed thousands of NATO troops, including through such tactics as near-daily suicide attacks. Jihad, shortly beforehand an international taboo, stood tall, victorious, and vindicated in the wake of a US defeat that was political, military and, most importantly, ideological.
Five years may be a short time to deduce effective cause and effect in geopolitics. Perceptions, meanwhile, form with relative ease. US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConel claimed, for example, that it was the US’ loss of face which had emboldened the Kremlin to storm into an invasion of Ukraine barely six months after the US’ disgraced withdrawal. Yet in the five years following the Doha Agreement, longer term trends in the jihadosphere continue to take visible shape. The Taliban template, crucially, can be seen elsewhere. Across the Durand Line in Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with whom the Afghan Taliban have a long and complex relationship, has quintessentially copy-pasted the Taliban’s playbook. The TTP too has availed itself of transnational objectives and is, notwithstanding a deadly and effective campaign against Pakistan’s increasingly unpopular and impotent military, portraying more temperance in its posture toward civil and military personnel.
Further away but more importantly in Syria, other Taliban seeds continue to bloom. The overthrow of the totalitarian Assad regime in December at the hands of Hay’at Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) has added another ingredient into the cauldron of contemporary jihad. HTS’ leader and current president Ahmad al-Shara is only a few months into his stint as a national leader, but his approach has diverged significantly from the Taliban. Al-Shara’ has alluded to this by respectfully though perhaps awkwardly describing Afghanistan as ‘tribal’. The key features of this so far have been al-Shara’s indisputable commitment to a political roadmap, part of which has included him promising democratic election, inclusivity, as well as an affirmation of women’s rights. Whether genuine or deceptive, al-Shara’ has stepped into the act of statesmanship with an ease that the Taliban have decidedly not.
Beneath pretences to statesmanship, however, al-Shara’s background cannot escape acknowledgement. Al-Shara was previously the leader of the Nusra Front, Syria’s local Al-Qaeda affiliate and more commonly known by his nom de guerre of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. Internationally, though, al-Shara’s modus operandi is similar to the Taliban, but perhaps more radical given his past. The Taliban were a locally-focussed group drawn by circumstance into a relationship with the avowedly globally-minded Al-Qaeda. Eschewing global goals as a locally-focussed group is no insurmountable challenge relative to Al-Shar’a, who was Al-Qaeda. As a lieutenant who cut his teeth in Iraq and whose group bears the hallmarks of its past in the continued presence of Uyghurs in its ranks, the gravity of the Syrian leader’s shift away from transnational aims, therefore, cannot be overstated.
Background notwithstanding, the former Al-Qaeda firebrand has sought to downplay his past and distance himself from it. It may be too early to judge the success of the rebranding of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani into President Ahmad al-Shara’, but it is indisputable that the Syrian leader has received a warmer global reception than the Taliban. This, though, is hardly a feat, particularly given the latter’s poor image stemming from a fixation on women and vindication of wartime propaganda against them.
Irrespective of governance, jihad in the post-Doha world, as evidenced by Al-Shara’s takeover and steady shift to statebuilding, is seemingly undergoing a slow arc to redemption and normalisation. It is also continuing to evolve from its modernity-rooted globalism to being locally-focussed, and, with more precise goals and targets, increasingly successful. The extent to which the Taliban may have pioneered the strategic shift is up for debate. It is, however, undeniable that the Taliban again normalised jihad on a global scale.
Afghanistan Today: Peaceful and Perplexing
For Afghanistan the Agreement’s significance cannot be overstated. If the US had legitimised the Taliban internationally through the Agreement, the same would be even truer in Afghanistan. The Taliban replaced the Ghani regime, a mere by-product of US occupation, as Washingthon’s principal Afghan interlocutor. In addition to Ghani’s openly acknowledged impotence, the Agreement would be the final nail in any shred of legitimacy retained by Kabul, whose survival was put on show as being dependent solely on the US occupation which had birthed it. The cascade of events unfurled by the Agreement avalanched into the Taliban’s victory as Kabul’s triumvirate fled. Ghani and Mohib fled together. Amrullah Saleh, meanwhile, fled north, but not before attempting an insurrection in his native Panjsher valley. Characteristically for Saleh, the insurrection failed.
Afghanistan is today nearly four years into the Taliban’s second stint in government. The country has changed in many respects. It has, since 2021, been largely at peace. Undeniable is the reality that the end of foreign occupation and concurrent absence of conflict has been a net benefit to Afghanistan. The country is, for the first time since 1978, wholly and totally administered by a government with a unified chain of command. Long gone are the days of civil war and squabbling of regionally-instated warlords propping up the wonky edifice of ostensibly constitutional government. The obscene façade was complete with the reality that it owed its existence to the thousands of foreign troops which installed and sustained it. The locally termed ‘islands of power’ are no more, and the combination of relatively stable governance and the lack of conflict has also seen a serious push toward economic development. At times, this focus has sounded more motivated by economic autarky than cliches of regional integration and connectivity.
Yet the most prominent projects, including the flagship Qushtepa Canal or the Mes Aynak mine, are not novel Taliban ideas. It was during previous regimes in which they were conceptualised and their delivery promised, but never delivered. This was largely due to the mixture of debilitating corruption and insecurity. More often than not, the latter was used to mask the former.
That, of course, is not all. Whilst the country has benefited from the spring of peace, other shortcomings are glaring. If the situation has been worse, it could also be better. Much better.
Internationally, the Taliban have spearheaded an economically-oriented foreign policy that has seen relations established and built upon with a diverse repository of states, including Qatar, the UAE, China, Russia, as well as almost all of its neighbours. Yet it remains undeniable that the country remains poorly understood and poorly perceived on an international level: synonymous with a long list of restrictions against women that make steadily less sense, even according to the overtly declared ethos of classical Islam. The latest of these were bans on female medical education, including midwifery: considered a communal obligation by even quarters with which it would otherwise keenly associate itself, such as the Darul Uloom seminary in Herat.
In other respects, Afghanistan remains much the same; sandwiched between powerful blocs geopolitically and, as ever, at odds with Pakistan. Afghanistan was further divided in the wake of Doha, which excluded a portion of the country’s political spectrum through marginalising Ghani’s regime. The chaotic nature of Ghani’s regime and the flight of its key figures only deepened intra-societal rifts. Under the Taliban, the state of any national discourse remains largely unchanged: Afghan-focussed, but foreign based. The Taliban’s unwillingness to partake meaningfully in any discussion beyond repetitive cliches and sloganeering has had the net effect of again forfeiting the arena of Afghan discourse to the former regime’s elites: already exiled, but huddled in choreographed conferences replete with tired soundbites in whichever foreign capital has decided upon their momentary utility.
The Taliban’s takeover, a direct result of the Agreement, also laid bare much else. Stark divisions emerged between what is effectively a Taliban civil administration in Kabul versus executive authority in Qandahar: a city whose fabled history dates back to its establishment by Alexander of Macedon, but which has become synonymous with bizarre edicts betraying an inexorable focus on women and the animus of turning back the clock of modernity to a romanticised past equally as impractical as fictional.
The most important of these edicts came in March 2022, when, despite promises as to their opening, girls’ secondary schools were again banned indefinitely ‘until further notice.’ Whilst many hoped that the policy would be reversed, in the aftermath of outraged coverage and heated opposition, the opposite took place. The ban on secondary education was extended to female university students, female students at private educational establishments, and most recently to female midwifery and nursing students.
The divisions engendered by those edicts cannot be dismissed. They are, in many ways, the symptom of a broader malaise. The edicts’ unilateralism and unpredictability underscore the more important marginalisation of the Rahbari Shura (leadership council). The Shura, during wartime, was perhaps the most important Taliban institution, and convened on all major policy. In the second Islamic Emirate, it has become steadily less important with each successive edict from Qandahar. Criticism, even of the public nature, has been made repeatedly by Taliban ministers themselves. Deputy Foreign Minister Stanakzai, who formerly headed the Taliban’s Doha office, recently lambasted the ban against girls’ education as an injustice which would elicit God’s punishment. Minister of Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani warned against the monopolisation of power. Minister of Defence Mawlawi Yaqoob referred to the need to respect the [Islamically] ‘legitimate’ demands of the people, in what was considered to be a veiled nod at the Amir’s current bans on education. Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, in what was considered a veiled reference to the Amir, censured the proclivity toward total bans as opposed to delineating alternative paths.
Doha’s Long Shadow
Afghanistan is today situated awkwardly between its tormented past and the uncertainty of its future. That uncertainty is compounded by its present state of sitting in a deliberately uncodified politico-legal vacuum. That vacuum allows its leadership to remain unanswerable by hiding behind the slogans of a largely inaccessible Sharia, whilst sidestepping the inevitable divisions that a codification process may induce. As if the country had not suffered enough, and amidst the dysfunctionality to which it is accustomed, the impulse of observers has been to form camps and argue ad infinitum as to whether Afghanistan was better served by the Taliban or the occupation.
Reality, predictably, lies somewhere in between. Afghanistan is both better and worse. The country is no longer subject to a gargantuan infrastructure of NGOs and foreign governments upholding a global enterprise of corruption. Gone too are the tens of thousands of foreign troops that accompanied and enforced that enterprise. Most importantly, it is no longer in a state of active conflict, and can once again breathe and conceptualise a tentative path to recovery. Yet as Afghanistan is free of the torments of a merciless trillion-dollar occupation, it also remains scarred by war, poor(er), and dysfunctionally governed. ‘No one,’ as one farmer in Helmand told me, ‘has done right by this country.’
The Taliban, on its fifth anniversary, may have declared an end to the Doha Agreement. Reality is quite different. Five years later, the Doha Agreement casts a long shadow over and continues to define Afghanistan: awkward, and unusual.