Doha Agreement: Negotiating U.S. Withdrawal with Taliban, Excluding Afghan Government

Overview

The Trump administration spent 18 months negotiating with the Taliban. The Afghan government — which the U.S. had spent $2 trillion and two decades building — was not allowed in the room. The Taliban insisted on this condition. The U.S. accepted it.

When the deal was signed, the Afghan government was handed the terms and told to comply. The terms included releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners.

Legitimization

The Doha Agreement was many things, but its most consequential effect was political: it legitimized the Taliban as a state actor capable of making binding agreements with the United States. For the Taliban, this was the culmination of two decades of insurgency. They had driven a superpower to the negotiating table and obtained a withdrawal commitment while remaining in the field.

The phone call Trump made to Mullah Baradar — the first between a U.S. president and Taliban leadership — completed the picture. The Taliban's political leadership had been recognized by the President of the United States.

The Afghan Government's Position

The Afghan government was not a party to the Doha Agreement. Afghan President Ghani was publicly critical of the negotiations and the terms. The prisoner release — 5,000 Taliban fighters, including senior commanders — was something he refused before U.S. pressure compelled compliance.

The U.S. had built and funded the Afghan government for 19 years. When it mattered, the Afghan government's objections to the terms of its own country's future were treated as a secondary concern.

The Aftermath

The SIGAR report was direct in its assessment: the Doha Agreement signaled to the Taliban that American political will had collapsed. Afghan military units — watching U.S. forces drawdown, watching close air support end, watching the prisoner releases — drew the obvious conclusion. Morale collapsed before the government did.

When Kabul fell, it fell in days rather than the weeks or months that even pessimistic U.S. assessments had projected. The evacuation was chaotic, deadly, and left thousands of U.S. partners behind.