For the past two months, U.S. officials, Taliban leaders, and Afghan diplomats have been creeping towards a compromise to end the 17-year U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan. On January 26, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad left Qatar after six days of negotiations with Taliban leadership: the longest that the two players have ever consulted.

Many Americans, like myself, were children when the Afghan insurgency began. We heard stories of fellow patriots who had fought and died on Afghan soil, knowing only that the bloodshed was connected to an earlier stream: the Al-Qaeda attack on New York City on 9/11. The stories we heard about the Taliban seemed disjointed; I read I Am Malala and saw the Taliban as looking inward, while Al-Qaeda was clearly expansive in its objectives. In order to understand how the United States can secure safety for not only its men and women in uniform, but the Afghan men, women, and children that have fallen at the hands of the Taliban, a history of the war must be understood.

For the past 17 years, I've been piecing together fragments of anecdotes, headlines, and directives concerning Afghanistan. I'm here now to synthesize that.

The goals of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Middle East and southwest Asia must first be considered. The two groups are characterized by extroverted and introverted militancy, respectively. The Taliban came to power riding on the promise of securing stability in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though a disdain for the West is certainly present in the norms it perpetrated, this disdain is manifested through the rigorous imposition of moral code upon the local population rather than attacks against Western institutions outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Notably, communications are restricted, and women over the age of ten are prohibited from receiving external education.

Al-Qaeda holds the same outlook where the conduct of daily life is concerned; however, they look towards a global imposition of these standards. Formed in the late twentieth century by Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda is more active in a foreign policy sense, routinely targeting western-- i.e., American-- facilities in acts of violence. Before the attack on 9/11, Al-Qaeda orchestrated bombings on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people in total. In 1998, Bin Laden formally declared war with the United States.

It took the U.S. two years, on September 18, 2001, to respond in kind. With the passage of S.J. Res. 23, the 107th Congress authorized war against the perpetrators of 9/11 and all those who harbor them. Operation Freedom, code for incessant bombing of the Taliban, began one month later.

That's where the distinction between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban comes in. At the time of 9/11, the Taliban enjoyed effective control of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and allowed Al-Qaeda to live and operate through the region. Though reports show that 9/11 was orchstrated without the knowledge of Taliban leadership, the Taliban continued to afford Bin Laden safe haven after the siege, enjoying funding in return. Here, we see the reasoning behind the U.S. removal of Taliban leadership form Kabul in December of 2001.

Over the next ten years, the U.S. sought to install a transitional government in Afghanistan. 2004 brought the first presidential elections and the drafting of the Afghan Constitution. With the Taliban ousted from formal power, the U.S. turned its sights to Al-Qaeda, its primary target.

Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011. In 2013, the Afghan security takeover was deemed complete. President Obama stated his goal of removing troops completely by 2016. In 2017, the U.S. effectively shifted its sights to a different sect of jihadism: ISIS. All these things paved the road for negotiation, long and treacherous as it was.

Though the Taliban no longer controls Kabul, they remain an active force in the region. In 2018, the group killed +115 people in the city. Any peace negotiation that excluded them would exclude a major sect of Afghan power, and thus be ineffective.

Today, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar stands as the Taliban's chief peace negotiator. A main challenge lies in forcing a dialogue between him and the Afghan government, represented by President Ashraf Ghani. Dialogue between the two is but one precondition for U.S. withdrawal, a goal sought by both the Taliban and the United States. Additionally, a ceasefire must be reached, and the Taliban must agree never to allow Afghan territory to be used by insurgents. The last provision underscores the last 17 years of involvement in Afghanistan; except this time, we're referring to ISIS instead of Al-Qaeda.

Many Americans see withdrawal from Afghanistan as long overdue. Since the insurgency began, 2,419 American lives have been lost, and over $932 billion has been spent.

Others point towards the 62,000 Afghan military and 24,000 civilian lives that have been given to the conflict, and criticize the United States for negotiating with the force that took them away. They argue that, even if a ceasefire is reached, the quality of life that will be led by Afghans, particularly women and children, with Taliban presence is not of a caliber that the U.S. can consciously stand by. Reconciling Taliban core ideals with the Afghan Constitution, which embeds Western ideals of freedom, is an impossibility.

Though the U.S. and the Taliban have agreed in principle to stopping hostilities, difficulty lies in drafting and signing concrete terms. Enforcement of such is another matter. Although Afghanistan is part of the United Nations, the Taliban is not its recognized government, and President Ghani must be included in a signed deal if the UN is to have any ability to enforce its terms. Even then, the question remains of how much sway in international organizations non-state armed groups should hold. To negotiate is to recognize, and that can have important implications in the international legal sense.

Sources:
https://www.cfr.org/expert-roundup/al-qaeda-taliban-nexus
https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/23
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-talks.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/asia/taliban-peace-deal-afghanistan.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-peace-deal.html?module=inline