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An Afghan mess

Daniel Knowles: international correspondent, The Economist

Will the Taliban get back into government?

Talking to the enemy

A bleak sort of peace may be possible

THE AMERICAN withdrawal from Afghanistan will not have a Saigon-style moment,
with helicopters ferrying people out of its embassy as the Taliban encroach on Kabul.
Yet 2020 was the year in which the war, at least as far as America is concerned, began to
reach its end. In February President Donald Trump’s administration signed a deal with
the Taliban to withdraw American troops. In exchange, the militants promised to start
talking to the internationally recognised Afghan government, which in turn was forced
to release some 5,000 Taliban prisoners. By the end of the year the number of American
soldiers in the country had dropped to fewer than 5,000. That is just about enough to
ensure the security of international organisations’ headquarters in Kabul, but not much
more.

Does this mean that peace is about to come to a country that has known war since the
Soviet invasion in the late 1970s? Sadly, that is less clear. Nobody really has a clue what