The agreement, officially titled “The Agreement for Peace in Afghanistan,” does not end beyond three pages and is written in three languages; Dari, Pashtu and English. It consists of two parts; The Taliban agree that “Afghan soil is not used against the security of the United States and its allies” and the United States accepts the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan. The signing of the agreement was achieved by a seven-day “reduction of violence,” a term used instead of a “ceasefire,” a term the Taliban rejected, in part because a “ceasefire” suggested an end to hostilities to which the Taliban were unwilling to engage. Finally, the agreement stipulates that the United States will begin diplomatic talks with the United Nations to remove Taliban members from the “sanctions list.” But what happens next remains a problem. Although on March 18, 2020, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was temporarily suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak, U.S. forces have already begun to leave the country. Some in the United States question the terms of the agreement and even call it a surrender document. Faced with the weakness of the Kabul government and the U.S. branch that has supported your troops, some would say that they support the Kabul government, others fear that the Taliban will wait for American troops to leave and invade Kabul, as they did in 1995.

If that happens, the 20 years of war and the loss of nearly 2,500 American lives will have nothing to do. Initially, Afghan President Ghani announced that he would not release Taliban prisoners, but by March 15, 2020, a few days after the start of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, he announced the release of 1,500 Taliban prisoners. He also insisted that any freed Taliban detainee was required to sign an agreement in which he pledged not to return to the fighting. The Taliban have not yet accepted this compromise and, as a result, the necessary talks on the next stage of negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government have not yet begun. The agreement also provides that the Taliban and the Afghan government will begin a “dialogue and negotiations” on 10 March 2020, a date that has already passed. The specific themes of this “dialogue and negotiations” are not specified, but they should at least include the role of the Taliban in a future Afghan government, the role of Islamic law in the Afghan constitution, the protection and rights of women and other minorities and, ultimately, the direction of the country. As a precursor to intra-Afghan negotiations, the agreement states that the United States is ready to cooperate “with all parties concerned” in the release of war prisoners and political prisoners.