The Doha Agreement: An Incompetent Attempt at Diplomacy
Vineeth Jarabana, Online Branch, Staff Writer and Assistant Editor
March 2022
Last August, the international community was stunned by the images and videos coming out of Afghanistan. Afghans flooding the airport. Stowaways falling out of planes mid-flight. An explosion that resulted in significant bloodshed. While many have attempted to make sense of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) military withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is imperative to examine the diplomatic accord that contributed to this outcome: the Doha Agreement. Brokered by the Trump administration and an Islamic fundamentalist group known as the Taliban, the Doha Agreement was a deal between two longtime foes that intended to end a two decade-long war in Afghanistan. Although a well-intentioned diplomatic effort, the Doha Agreement was an incompetent diplomatic effort in that it was based on a flawed underlying approach and set the stage for a devastating military withdrawal.
The history of the Doha Agreement begins not in the Qatari hotel where it was negotiated, but rather on a Tuesday morning in 2001. Planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the two World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. Constituting the bloodiest attack ever on the American homeland, these terrorist attacks transformed the global geopolitical landscape overnight. The United States shifted to war footing, eventually invading Afghanistan after the Taliban, the group governing Afghanistan at the time, refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden, the man responsible for the terrorist attacks, and his accomplices. The United States would topple the Taliban, only to struggle in the years to come with defeating the Taliban insurgency and re-building a war-torn nation. After two decades of a stalemate, the United States and the Taliban would sign the Doha Agreement, a deal that promised the departure of NATO military forces from Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban vowing to combat terrorism and continue negotiations with the Western-backed Afghan government.
To begin with, the Doha Agreement was, at its core, rooted in a defective diplomatic strategy. Rather than bringing in key stakeholders such as the Afghan government, it was simply a bilateral deal between the United States and the Taliban. The only mention of the Afghan government in the deal was a promise that the Taliban would negotiate with them in good faith, a reach considering the Taliban’s history of unserious diplomacy with the Afghan government. By failing to enlist the Afghan government as a partner in negotiating this agreement, the Trump administration unnecessarily emboldened the Taliban. For years, Taliban officials have decried the Afghan government as a puppet of the West. Leaving the Afghan government out of the deal only amplified this talking point. Another flaw in the diplomatic strategy that led to the Doha Agreement is the lack of a focus on deterrence. Potential non-compliance is most effectively deterred by the threat of consequences. However, the Trump administration did not bother to include any provisions in the deal that would deter non-compliance from the Taliban. For example, why is there not a clause in the agreement that leaves open the possibility of the re-deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan should the Taliban not meet their negotiated commitments?
Additionally, the catastrophic NATO military withdrawal from Afghanistan has its roots in the Doha Agreement. American defense officials have admitted that the aforementioned exclusion of the Afghan government in the negotiations, paired with the lack of concrete human rights guarantees in the closing deal, greatly diminished the morale of the Afghan military and civilians. Imagine what it must have felt like to be an Afghan soldier. You no longer had the support of the United States in their fight against Taliban militants. What if the Taliban defeated you? There was nothing binding them from repressing your country once again. This diminished morale gave way to the collapse of the Afghan military as the Taliban offensive gained steam. Many Afghan soldiers would lay down their weapons at the first sight of the Taliban with some even switching sides. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would end up fleeing Afghanistan after learning that Taliban militants were encircling Kabul. The lack of fight from the Afghan military would culminate in a chaotic withdrawal that diminished Western credibility on the international stage, led to mass civilian casualties, and brought back a repressive Taliban regime.
While any efforts towards a durable peace are admirable, the Doha Agreement represented an ineffective attempt at diplomacy. The repercussions of its basis in a faulty diplomatic approach and the resultant NATO military withdrawal from Afghanistan will reverberate in the coming years.