Sweeping conquests test US hopes of more moderate Taliban
Associated PressSweeping Taliban conquests in Afghanistan this week are challenging the Biden administration’s hopes that a desire for international respect — and for international aid and cash — will moderate the fundamentalist militia’s worst behaviors when the U.S. ends its war there. U.S. envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad traveled to Qatar this week to make that point to Taliban officials directly, telling Voice of America that if the Taliban took over Afghanistan by force “they will become a pariah state.” Administration officials reject criticism by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who opposes the withdrawal and dismisses what he calls “diplomatic carrots.″ Regardless of whether the Taliban heeds that warning, Biden shows no sign of slowing or reversing a decision to withdraw from the war. For today’s Taliban, U.S. talk of things like international inclusion, aid and reconstruction money might have mattered more had it come even a few years ago, said Andrew Watkins, senior Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group. The prospect of the world recognizing the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government if their blitz succeeds “is a value to them,” said Carter Malkasian, an Afghanistan expert who advised then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford during the U.S.-Taliban talks. “However, that’s probably not going to cause them to give any kind of large-scale concessions,” said Malkasian, author of “The American War in Afghanistan: A History.” What that hope of legitimacy could do is moderate the Taliban’s behavior during and after their battlefield campaign, Malkasian said, so they refrain from some of the worst abuses of the past.
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