United States to sign historic deal with the Taliban, beginning the process of ending the war.

Civilians release pigeons and balloons to celebrate a reduction of violence in Jalalabad. ABC News/AFP.

The United States will sign a historic deal with the Taliban, beginning the process to end the war there. ABC News. The announcement came from President Trump and comes after a week long cease fire that was a success. The agreement would eventually lead to the end of the war but it is dependent on cooperation from both the Taliban and the Afghan government. That cooperation will also require the Taliban to not work with al-Qaeda and ISIS. If the agreement succeeds it could end the 18 year old war. 

My Comment:

Normally this would be a huge story but Coronavirus is dominating the news. With the bickering over the virus reaching epic proportions the media isn't going to make a story that is positive for President Trump go viral. One of the reasons I started this blog is to cover stories the mainstream media isn't covering that well and this is certainly the case here. 

Ending the war in Afghanistan would be a massive win for President Trump and America. The war has lasted 18 years for little reason. We accomplished our goal there, the destruction of al-Qaeda, years ago and now they don't really exist as a terror group. Indeed, the only terror group active in Afghanistan is ISIS and they are on the backfoot as well, since both the Afghan government and the Taliban are fighting them. 

It is beyond time for us to pull out. 2,440 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and we have spent billions of dollars there. And we never even came close to winning the war in Afghanistan. Had we made it our sole focus after 9/11 and deployed thousands of troops we might have been able to win militarily but after the Iraq War, Afghanistan was on the back burner. We could technically win now if we were to unleash the full might of our military but nobody wants that, including President Trump. 

Will it work? I am not sure. The Taliban has torpedoed these talks before by launching attacks, but in this case the week long cease fire seemed to have worked. They also have to be sick of the fighting and would benefit from peace. Plus the Afghan government would be very happy to have the fighting stop. 

But we do have to remember that the Taliban are Islamic fundamentalists and have betrayed us in the past. They have both religious and secular reasons to continue the war. Most importantly they might not want to give up the fight now when they are winning. If they keep the war going they might get better terms and could even win the war outright. 

That being said, I think the war probably will end. Everyone wants it and even if the talks don't work out I think that it will sooner rather than later. President Trump would love to be able to keep his campaign promises and pull out. He's going to do whatever he can to end the war.