Biden admin likely to keep US troops in Afghanistan amid escalating violence, stalled talks.
The Taliban, while engaged in intermittent talks with the Afghan government, have also sustained high level... View MoreBiden admin likely to keep US troops in Afghanistan amid escalating violence, stalled talks.
The Taliban, while engaged in intermittent talks with the Afghan government, have also sustained high levels of deadly attacks and refused to agree to a ceasefire -- even as the country reels from the coronavirus pandemic and an ensuing economic crisis, with poverty and unemployment rates sharply up.
That violence breaks the spirit of the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed by former President Donald Trump's administration nearly one year ago, which called for the militant group to work towards a ceasefire with the Afghan government and engage in meaningful talks about the way forward.
The deal also laid out a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal that had a full exit by May 2021 if the Taliban met those commitments, as well as a promise to break ties with terror groups like al-Qaida -- whose base in Afghanistan was used to help launch the Sept. 11th attacks.
The Taliban have not met their commitments. As you know, there is a looming deadline of early May ... but without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks on the Afghan National Security Forces and, by dint of that, the Afghan people, it's very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement," Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday.
Kirby's comments are substantiated by a new Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, report published Monday, which found casualties "exceptionally high for the winter months when fighting normally subsides.
There has been no cease-fire agreement and high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite repeated pleas from senior U.S. and international officials to reduce violence in an effort to advance the peace process," John Sopko, the longtime special inspector general, wrote in the report's introduction. "Nor is it evident, as SIGAR discusses in this report, that the Taliban has broken ties with the al-Qaeda terrorists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on the United States."
While the Biden team seems to want to use U.S. troops as leverage to secure an agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the militant group has warned that the U.S. must meet its commitment to exit the country. The Taliban's deputy negotiator threatened insurgents would resume attacks on U.S. service members if not.
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