When the furore over Mr Trump’s tweets subsides, the military realities for America remain unchanged
IN THREE SHORT messages sent as Kabul slept, President Donald Trump has upended more than a year of painstaking American negotiation with the insurgents of the Taliban, who have been fighting to overthrow the American-backed government in Afghanistan for 18 years. Mr Trump revealed that senior Taliban leaders had been due to meet him on Sunday at Camp David, the president’s country estate.
Mr Trump’s reversal came less than a week after his senior negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, had announced that a deal had been reached in principle to begin winding up America’s longest war. Mr Khalilzad said the accord with the Taliban would see 5,400 of America’s 14,000 troops leave in the next four-and-a-half months. A fuller withdrawal was expected over the following year or more.
As the week wore on, opinion against Mr Khalilzad’s deal appeared to harden. Indiscriminate bombings in Kabul killed dozens of civilians. Nine senior former American envoys to Afghanistan gave warning that a hasty withdrawal would result only in civil war. The Afghan government, led by Ashraf Ghani, said it had concerns.
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