United States–Taliban deal
Based on Wikipedia: United States–Taliban deal
On a February afternoon in 2020, in the gleaming Qatari capital of Doha, American diplomats sat across from representatives of the Taliban and signed an agreement that would effectively end America's longest war. There was just one problem: the government of Afghanistan—the one the United States had spent nearly two decades and trillions of dollars propping up—wasn't invited to the table.
This wasn't an oversight. It was the deal.
The Agreement Nobody Expected
The document bore an unusual official title: the "Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the United States of America and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." That last part—Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—was what the Taliban called themselves. The United States didn't recognize them as a legitimate government, yet here was America signing a formal agreement with them as if they were a sovereign nation.
The chief American negotiator was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born diplomat who had served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations. He represented the first Trump administration in negotiations that had been ongoing for over a year. The Taliban sent their political leadership from Qatar, where they had maintained an office since 2013—a peculiar arrangement in which America's enemy operated openly in a country hosting one of the largest U.S. military bases in the Middle East.
What emerged from those talks was straightforward in its core bargain: America would leave, and the Taliban would promise not to let terrorist groups use Afghan soil to attack the United States again. The specter of September 11th, 2001 hung over every provision—the entire reason for the invasion nearly two decades earlier had been to deny al-Qaeda their sanctuary.
The Fine Print That Changed Everything
The agreement laid out a precise timeline. American forces would drop from about 13,000 troops to 8,600 within 135 days—roughly four and a half months. If the Taliban held up their end, every last American soldier would be gone within fourteen months, by May 1st, 2021. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance commonly called NATO, would follow the same schedule.
Five American military bases would close. Economic sanctions on the Taliban would end. And crucially, American forces would stop their offensive operations against Taliban fighters.
This last point proved devastating.
For years, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces—the army and police that America had trained and equipped—relied heavily on American air support. When Taliban fighters massed for an attack, American aircraft would strike them. This capability had been the great equalizer, allowing Afghan forces to hold ground they couldn't otherwise defend.
The agreement included what officials called "secret annexes"—provisions not shared publicly, and critically, not even shared with the Afghan government itself. One of these reportedly established that American aircraft couldn't attack Taliban groups waiting more than 500 meters from Afghan positions. In practical terms, Taliban fighters could gather just beyond this invisible line, coordinate their assault, and attack knowing American jets wouldn't intervene until they were already in combat.
The Taliban quickly exploited this. They also exploited the secrecy itself, spreading propaganda to Afghan soldiers and police that America had already handed over their territories. Why fight, the Taliban messengers asked, when your allies have abandoned you?
A Government Excluded
In Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani watched these negotiations unfold without him. The deal required his government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners before peace talks between the two Afghan sides could even begin. The Americans had committed him to this without asking.
Ghani's response was blunt: "The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The release of prisoners is not the United States' authority, but it is the authority of the government of Afghanistan."
This captured the fundamental absurdity of the situation. America was negotiating the future of Afghanistan with an insurgent group while the recognized government—the one sitting in the United Nations, the one receiving American aid, the one whose soldiers were dying daily—had no say in the terms.
The results of the 2019 Afghan presidential election were still being disputed, adding another layer of chaos. Ghani and his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, both claimed victory. Until they resolved their power struggle, Afghanistan couldn't even decide who would represent them in any future talks with the Taliban.
The Prisoner Dilemma
What followed was a months-long drama over prisoners that revealed how little leverage the Afghan government actually had.
The Taliban insisted: no prisoner release, no talks. Ghani tried to compromise, offering to release 1,500 prisoners if they signed pledges not to return to battle. The Taliban rejected this immediately. They wanted their 5,000 fighters back, no conditions attached.
On March 10th, 2020—the same day Afghan-Taliban negotiations were supposed to begin—the United States started withdrawing troops anyway. The message was clear: America was leaving regardless of what Kabul wanted.
By late March, something remarkable happened. A three-person Taliban delegation flew to Kabul—the first Taliban representatives to set foot in the capital since American forces had driven them from power in 2001. They came to discuss prisoner exchanges, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Afghan government and its mortal enemy were finally talking face to face.
But the talks immediately stalled over which prisoners to release. The Afghan government wanted to free low-level fighters. The Taliban wanted their commanders back—the very men most likely to return to the battlefield and lead attacks.
On April 7th, the Taliban walked out, calling the negotiations "fruitless." Their spokesman announced via Twitter that the delegation was being recalled from Kabul. Hours of discussion had produced nothing.
The Violence Surge
Here is where the numbers tell a devastating story.
In the 45 days following the agreement—from March 1st to April 15th, 2020—the Taliban conducted more than 4,500 attacks across Afghanistan. This was a 70 percent increase compared to the same period the previous year. Over 900 Afghan security forces died in those weeks, compared to about 520 in the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Taliban casualties dropped dramatically—from about 1,660 to just 610. With American air support restricted and Afghan forces unable to conduct major offensive operations, the Taliban could attack with far less risk.
The Pentagon acknowledged the problem. Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman admitted that while the Taliban had stopped attacking American and coalition forces, the violence was "unacceptably high" and "not conducive to a diplomatic solution." But American strikes were now limited to defensive operations—protecting their own forces and their Afghan partners when directly engaged.
By late June, Afghanistan reported what officials called its "bloodiest week in 19 years." In just seven days, 291 Afghan security force members were killed and 550 wounded across 422 Taliban attacks. Forty-two civilians died, including women and children. The Taliban kidnapped 60 people in a single province.
Breaking the Impasse
Through the spring and summer of 2020, the prisoner negotiations ground forward despite the violence. The Americans pushed Ghani relentlessly. By August, the Afghan government had released 5,100 Taliban prisoners. The Taliban had released 1,000 government soldiers in return.
But 400 names remained on the Taliban's list that Ghani refused to release. These weren't ordinary fighters—they were accused of serious crimes, and Ghani claimed he lacked the constitutional authority to free them unilaterally.
So he convened a loya jirga—a traditional Afghan grand assembly of elders and leaders—to decide the matter. For three days in August, the assembly debated. In the end, they agreed to release the final 400 prisoners.
The cost of this decision would become apparent in the months ahead, as experienced Taliban commanders returned to the battlefield.
A Negotiator Under Fire
The Afghan government had assembled a 21-member team to negotiate with the Taliban, but even selecting this team proved contentious. The Taliban initially rejected the entire roster, demanding a team "constituted in accordance with the laid out principles" of their agreement with the Americans—principles the Afghan government had never agreed to.
Among the Afghan negotiators was Fawzia Koofi, one of Afghanistan's most prominent women's rights activists. She had been vocal in denouncing Taliban abuses, particularly their treatment of women and girls. On August 14th, 2020, as she traveled near Kabul with her sister Maryam, gunmen opened fire on their vehicle. Both women survived, but the attack sent an unmistakable message about the risks facing anyone who dared negotiate for Afghan rights.
The Final Withdrawal
By January 2021, when Joe Biden took office as president, only 2,500 American troops remained in Afghanistan. His administration reviewed the withdrawal agreement and made one significant change: instead of the May 1st deadline the Trump administration had agreed to, American forces would leave by September 11th—the twentieth anniversary of the attacks that had started it all. Biden later moved this to August 31st.
Other Western nations set their own schedules. Germany and Italy pulled their troops out on July 2nd, 2021. Australia finished its withdrawal by mid-July. The British conducted their final flight on August 28th.
Throughout this period, the Taliban advanced steadily across the country. The Afghan forces, demoralized and undersupplied, collapsed faster than anyone in Washington had publicly predicted. District after district fell. Provincial capitals followed.
On August 15th, 2021—just over a year after the loya jirga released those final prisoners—Taliban fighters entered Kabul. President Ghani fled the country. The government America had spent two decades building evaporated in days.
The U.S. completed its evacuation on August 30th, 2021, in scenes of chaos at Kabul's airport that would define the end of America's longest war.
The Debate That Continues
Critics of the Doha Agreement—as the deal came to be known—argued that the Trump administration had essentially appeased the Taliban. By negotiating directly with the insurgents while excluding the Afghan government, America had undermined the very authority it claimed to support. By agreeing to release thousands of prisoners, it had returned experienced fighters to the battlefield. By restricting air support, it had removed the Afghan military's greatest advantage.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction—an oversight body that had monitored the American effort for years—later concluded that the agreement created "a sense of abandonment within the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and the Afghan population." The restrictions on American military support left Afghan forces "ill-prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal."
Defenders of the agreement countered that after nearly two decades of war, with thousands of American lives lost and trillions of dollars spent, no military solution existed. The Taliban controlled or contested vast swaths of the country despite the American presence. A negotiated exit was the only realistic option.
The agreement received unanimous endorsement from the United Nations Security Council—a rare moment of consensus among the major powers. Pakistan, China, Russia, and India all welcomed the deal, each for their own strategic reasons.
What Remains
Today, the Taliban rule Afghanistan as they did before September 11th, 2001—though now with American military equipment left behind in the withdrawal and infrastructure built with American money. Women have been barred from secondary education and most employment. The promises of a changed Taliban that some hoped for during negotiations have not materialized.
The Doha Agreement stands as a case study in the limits of negotiated withdrawals, the consequences of excluding key parties from their own futures, and the gap between diplomatic documents and ground reality. It raises uncomfortable questions about what two decades of American presence actually built, and how quickly it could all disappear.
The agreement technically required the Taliban to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to attack the United States. Whether they honor this commitment—the original reason for the entire twenty-year war—remains the central question of Afghanistan's future relationship with the West.
For now, the longest war in American history ended not with victory or defeat in the traditional sense, but with a piece of paper signed in a Qatari hotel conference room, between America and an enemy it refused to recognize as a government, about the fate of a country whose leaders weren't allowed in the room.