46 THENEWYORKER, OCTOBER 28, 2019
hellish and destructive for Afghans, they
have also made it even more abstract for
Americans. The rise in the number of
Afghan dead and injured has corre-
sponded with a decline in the number
of U.S. dead and injured. This might ex-
plain why some people in Washington—
including many of those who decried the
Doha deal—argue for the status quo, en-
visaging a generation-long war of attri-
tion in which ISIS and Al Qaeda are vig-
ilantly kept in check and the Taliban,
perhaps, eventually falter. It would be ex-
pensive but would cost relatively few
American lives. If current trends continue,
however, within a decade, hundreds of
thousands more Afghans could die.
If indifference to civilian suffering un-
derlies some arguments for perpetuating
our military presence in Afghanistan, it
also seems to animate some advocates of
withdrawal. Trump has always expressed
more interest in “extricating” the U.S.
from Afghanistan than in forestalling a
cataclysm there. “As soon as we leave, it’s
all going to blow up anyway,” he said, in
- This July, he told reporters, “If we
wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and
win it, I could win that war in a week.”
He added, “Afghanistan would be wiped
off the face of the earth.”
I was in Kabul when Trump made
this statement, and the next day I met
with Nader Nadery, the chairman of Af-
ghanistan’s Civil Service Commission
and a former senior adviser to President
Ghani. During the Taliban regime, Na-
dery was imprisoned and tortured for
his activism as a student at Kabul Uni-
versity. He later studied at Harvard’s
Kennedy School. When I entered his
office, Nadery invited me onto a balcony
with a view of Darul Aman Palace, a co-
lossal neoclassical structure that looked
as if it had been teleported from the
Latin Quarter of Paris. Darul Aman was
erected to house the country’s parlia-
ment not long after Afghanistan became
independent from Great Britain, in 1919.
Coups, fires, and civil wars later reduced
the building to a roofless shambles. Three
years ago, the Ghani administration com-
missioned a renovation, and, in August,
celebrations for Afghanistan’s centen-
nial were held at the refurbished palace.
When the subject of Trump’s com-
ments came up, Nadery seemed at a loss
for words. “It hurts,” he said.
The prospect of a hasty U.S. with-
drawal is deeply worrying to Afghan
officials. “We feel a strong urgency for
peace,” Nadery told me. “But if we rush
it the end result will be that it is very
short-lived.” He cited the “decent inter-
val” that Henry Kissinger wanted be-
tween the departure of U.S. troops from
Vietnam and the complete takeover of
the country by the North Vietnamese.
A closer analogy might be Iraq. At the
end of 2011, when President Obama with-
drew American forces there, Iraq ap-
peared more stable than Afghanistan
does today. Within a few years, however,
ISIS had taken over several major cities,
and the Iraqi Army had disintegrated,
prompting U.S. troops to return.
During the Doha negotiations,
Khalilzad had promised that “no agree-
ment will be done if we don’t see a per-
manent ceasefire.” The Taliban agreed
only to guarantee safe passage to de-
parting American troops, insisting that
any ceasefire with the Afghan govern-
ment be negotiated after Doha. This
meant that they would be free to con-
tinue attacking Afghan forces and ci-
vilians throughout the U.S. withdrawal.
President Ghani’s spokesperson openly
expressed satisfaction that the deal fell
through. Members of the Ghani admin-
istration felt that the negotiations had
galvanized Taliban fighters in Afghani-
stan and had elevated their leaders abroad.
Hamdullah Mohib, the national-secu-
rity adviser, told me, “Directly negotiat-
ing with the United States gave the Tal-
iban a platform to also gain recognition
from other countries across the region.
That led to a boost of morale on the
ground.” An Afghan official who met the
Taliban representatives in Doha said that
they acted as if they had won the war.
When it was reported that the Taliban
would sign the accord as “the Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan,” the news out-
raged many people in the government,
whose official name is the Islamic Re-
public of Afghanistan. “That was hard
to digest,” one official said. “It felt like all
our sacrifices were for nothing.”
As legitimate as such concerns may
be, Afghan opposition to the Doha
framework might prove tragically my-
opic. Trump could choose to withdraw
U.S. troops from Afghanistan tomor-
row, unilaterally and without conditions.
He recently did this in northern Syria,
abandoning the U.S.’s Kurdish allies andleaving them vulnerable to slaughter by
Turkey. Republicans joined Democrats
in assailing that decision as an uncon-
scionable betrayal. Standing firm, Trump
tweeted, “The stupid endless wars, for
us, are ending!”T
he Taliban insist that, once the U.S.
commits to withdrawing from the
country, they will work out their differ-
ences with their fellow-Afghans, in the
interest of a lasting peace. Not unreason-
ably, some question their sincerity and
the wisdom of taking their promises on
faith. Yet Taliban leaders have already
shown that they are willing and able to
talk to their countrymen in a way that
would have been unthinkable not so long
ago. This July, a German organization
helped put together an unofficial two-
day “dialogue” between the Taliban ne-
gotiators in Doha and forty-five Afghans
from various sectors of society. Although
President Ghani was not involved, three
government officials, including Nader
Nadery, participated in the event.
So did eleven women. One of them
was Jamila Afghani, the forty-five-year-
old founder of a nonprofit organization
that advocates for gender equality. Af-
ghani, who lives in Kabul, grew up in a
refugee camp in Pakistan and had never
met a Talib. On the delegation’s first
evening in Doha, a dinner for both sides
was held in the hotel where the confer-
ence would take place. “I had to push
myself to leave my room,” Afghani told
me. “I didn’t want to go.”
By the time she arrived, everyone
was seated. There were seventeen Tal-
iban. Passing their tables, Afghani, who
had polio as an infant and uses a cane,
said “Salaam” and kept walking. One of
the men stood up and hurried after her.
“If you need any assistance, I am at your
service,” he told Afghani.
“I was shocked,” she remembered.
“It was not what I was expecting.”
The next day, in a large hall, Sher Mo-
hammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s
chief negotiator, read a statement. A vet-
eran of the war against the Soviets, Stan-
ikzai called for the defeat of the infidels
and condemned the Ghani administra-
tion as a puppet of the West. Nader Na-
dery spoke next. He recounted being tor-
tured by the Taliban, and told Stanikzai
and his colleagues, “I am willing to forgive
you for what you have done to me and