Zalmay Khalilzad — Trump’s Afghanistan policy czar — has, in the course of his long career, demonstrated formidable talent for defending the indefensible. Khalilzad has made clear to Trump that the ISI alone can coerce the Taliban into sticking with whatever deal it makes, at least until his re-election campaign is out of the way. Faced with crippling financial pressures, Islamabad has reason to cooperate — though no-one is sure if it actually has the power to enforce its wishes on the Taliban.
Either way, history suggests, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. In 1994, the administration of Bill Clinton had sought accommodation with the Taliban, hoping to facilitate energy giant Unocal's efforts to build an ambitious pipeline linking Central Asia's vast energy fields with the Indian Ocean.
Muhammad Ghaus, the Taliban’s foreign minister, led an expenses-paid delegation to Unocal's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas, at the end of 1997. The clerics, housed at a five-star hotel, were taken to see the NASA museum, several supermarkets and the local zoo.
In April 1996, Robin Raphel — then Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, and later Barack Obama’s ambassador for non-military aid to Pakistan, visited Kabul to lobby for the project.
Later that year, she was again in Kabul, this time calling on the international community to “engage the Taliban”. Raphael later had these words for sceptics: “The Taliban does not seek to export Islam, only to liberate Afghanistan”.
Few believe these remarks were made in ignorance. In a 1998 report, Physicians for Human Rights documented the Islamic Emirate's war against Afghanistan's women: The closing down of schools, the denial of medical care facilities, public floggings and institutionalised child-rape. It noted that men faced “extortion, arrest, gang rape, and abuse in detention because of their ethnicity or presumed political views”.
Even as the a State Department report described the Taliban’s guest, Osama bin Laden as one of the “most significant sponsors of terrorism today”, the regime was never declared a State sponsor of terrorism.
“The truth”, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright later wrote, “was that those [attacks before 9/11] were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, they were not thousands and it did not happen on US soil”.
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In 1996, oil lubricated the road to carnage; this time, it’s terror. Both China and Russia are also backing the Taliban, hoping it will take on the Islamic State, as well as Chechen and ethnic-Uighur jihadists. For India, this is bad news. In return for Islamabad using its influence with the Taliban, it will, most certainly, demand a price: An end to the international pressure it has been facing to shut down jihadist groups operating against India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cautioned Trump of the risks of allowing a free pass on India in return for a peace deal with the Taliban. India’s decision to strike across the Line of Control earlier this year was, among other things, a warning to Western capitals of the potential Pakistan-based terrorism has to spark off a crisis with global consequences.
There are no good outcomes for the rest of the world from this deal, either. As the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate rises again in Afghanistan, jihadist movements, the global jihadist movement will find a homeland, as it did before 9/11. In the event the Taliban does act against global jihadists, many in its own ranks will defect to the Islamic State — an outcome that will still give jihadists safe-havens.
Islamabad, alone, has reason to coyly encourage Trump’s overtures: His retreat from Kabul will be gift for General Qamar Javed Bajwa, bringing untold wealth to the country, just as 9/11 was for General Pervez Musharraf.