Afghanistan agreement: big thumbs down

Michael Rubin, writing at the Washington Examiner, says that its flaws are many.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the envoy that Trump sent over there to negotiate has been spending most of his time with the Taliban and keeping the Afghan government out of the loop.

He seems willing to settle for a pretty flimsy level of reassurance:

While Khalilzad has been telling people that the Taliban have promised not to allow al Qaeda to use Afghan territory as a launch 

Khalilzad’s agreement also makes no mention of the Pakistani sanctuaries which the Taliban now enjoy. He engages in a logical flaw, apparently by giving credence to his Taliban interlocutors Afghan nationalism, while simultaneously ignoring that they had collectively spent more time in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. That Pakistan also provided safe haven to Osama Bin Laden as the al Qaeda leader plotted attacks globally appears forgotten by both Khalilzad and those willing to fast track his agreement. 

Nor does the agreement demand Taliban uniformity. There’s the Quetta Shura, but also the Peshawar Shura and the Miran Shah Shura, not to mention the Northern Shura and the Haqqani network. Khalilzad amplifies an agreement with one into an agreement with all. That is simply foolish.

This little feature is quite the red flag:

To make things worse, the U.S. now appears to bless a postponement, if not cancellation, of Afghanistan’s looming elections. But if the peace agreement is to open the door to a real reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, then the Afghan government must be legitimate, and nothing proves legitimacy like democratic victory. Again, the motivation here seems to be a desire to keep Amrullah Saleh out of power, as his ticket with Ashraf Ghani appears headed to victory, and to avoid acknowledging that the Taliban fears submitting themselves to any popular vote for fear of the outcome. 

At least it's still in preliminary form.

Let's take the opportunity, while we still have it, to avoid another arrangement that brings on yet another round of oppression and terror-plotting.