Afghanistan: Has Biden inherited defeat in America’s longest war? – By Scott Peterson (CS Monitor) / January 29 2021
President Biden, dedicated to ending America’s longest war, may seek to invigorate what appears to be a hollow Afghanistan peace process. But his predecessor left him little room to maneuver.
With peace talks limping along and violence escalating across Afghanistan, the incoming Biden administration is vowing to “review” Taliban compliance with a withdrawal deal the United States signed last year with the Islamist insurgent group.
U.S. troop numbers are now at an all-time low in America’s longest war, after former President Donald Trump ordered a drawdown to just 2,500 on the eve of President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
But reaching that level, to be followed by a complete withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops by May, according to the deal, was meant to be conditional on a Taliban reduction of violence, severing ties with Al Qaeda, and progress toward peace. None have occurred.
Like his predecessor, President Biden has called for an end to the “forever war” in Afghanistan. But the Taliban have surged attacks nationwide and have been the driving force behind a systematic assassination campaign that has killed dozens of journalists, women, and civil society activists in recent months.
