But the deal leaves an unpleasant reality for the Trump administration: it signed an agreement with a movement in which an officially listed terrorist group, the Haqqani Network, known for its suicide bombing campaign, is an integral part of the leadership. The head of the network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the deputy head and military commander of the Taliban. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday strongly defended the Biden administration`s withdrawal from Afghanistan, insisting it was “time to end america`s longest war” and praising the evacuation of Kabul as “extraordinary.” The agreement sets a timetable for the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the impoverished Central Asian country once unknown to many Americans and now symbolises endless conflicts, foreign entanglements and an incubator of terrorist conspiracies. This agreement explicitly and rhetorically states that the United States does not recognize the Taliban or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a state. But the most important and only recognized actor in this agreement is the Taliban. This raises interesting questions about the policy of recognizing a State as an essential condition for peace in the Westphalian sovereign State system; a question of great interest among scholars of the colonial struggle for their right to self-determination and independence. It is this question that haunts the international sphere as actors struggle for recognition and legitimacy in a world order organized according to the Eurocentric practices of the sovereign state system. The agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, which follows more than a year of negotiations and ostensibly excluded the US-backed Afghan government, is not a final peace agreement, is full of ambiguities and could still be dissolved. The hope is that some kind of lasting peace can be achieved. The fear is that the hardest work lies ahead and that the Taliban will be encouraged by the US withdrawal to challenge a bitterly divided government in Kabul. Control of territory is an essential condition for the recognition of a State in international relations. The text of the agreement repeatedly stresses that the US and its allies require guarantees from the Taliban that the “Afghan soil” it controls will not be used against the security of the US and its allies. The wording of that text was tantamount to a State concluding an agreement with another State that it did not constitute an external threat to its sovereignty.
This becomes even clearer when the agreement states that “the United States and its allies will refrain from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, or interfering in its internal affairs.” This is nothing less than a de facto recognition of Afghanistan`s sovereignty under the Taliban. The agreement also accuses the Taliban of opening intra-Afghan negotiations with the Afghan parties following the announcement of the two security guarantees mentioned above. During the colonial period, it was the main national movement, whether the Indian National Congress in India or the African National Congress in South Africa, that took on the task of uniting and ensuring cooperation between different groups and factions within a country. This agreement entrusts this task to the Taliban, suggesting that it is possible to recognize them as Afghan nationalists. Interestingly, any possibility of this type of recognition and engagement is entrusted only “after” the search for Taliban security guarantees for the West. Why it matters: Blinken, who appears before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday and the Senate of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, is the first senior Biden official to testify after the chaotic retreat on Afghanistan. In the first session, tempers flared when House Republicans accused Blinken of lying and demanded his resignation. Why it matters: The deal was reviewed to lay the groundwork for the U.S. military`s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which coincided with a large-scale Taliban offensive that ended Sunday with the fall of Kabul.
Treaties and agreements on the difficult issue of security assurances and enforcement mechanisms traditionally belong to the realm of interaction between States and not to the realm of agreement between a State and a non-State actor, particularly one that has long been demonized as a terrorist. .