Talking to the Taliban while still fighting the Taliban

But the U.S., buoyed by an unprecedented Eid cease-fire along with direct U.S.-Taliban talks, now hopes that it can force the Taliban into a dialogue with the Afghan government. “We have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage,” James Mattis, the U.S. defense secretary, said last week ahead of a visit to Afghanistan. “It now has some framework, there’s some open lines of communication.” General John Nicholson, who until recently headed the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, said this month while handing over command that “it’s time for this war in Afghanistan to end,” as he urged the Taliban to enter into peace talks, adding: “Until you are willing to begin talking, we will keep fighting.”

Supporters of the continued U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan have cited various reasons for it: that it remains in the national interest; that it is vital to prevent the resurgence of international terrorism; and that it gives the U.S. a geopolitical foothold in the region. Each of those arguments has its own counterargument: that the mission has veered so far from its original intent and sucked up so many resources that it actually harms the national interest; that if preventing terrorism from gaining a foothold is the rationale to remain, then the U.S. should deploy an equal number of troops to Libya, Mali, and Yemen; and that Afghanistan is of such vital interest to Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India that keeping U.S. troops there puts them in the crosshairs of complicated regional rivalries.

But Karl Eikenberry, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011 and the commander of U.S. forces there before that, said there is also a moral argument about why the U.S. should remain.

“That’s the one that should be debated the most. For 17 years, we’ve been telling the Afghan people—women, minority groups, and youth— that America will stay in the fight until there is a sustainable peace,” he told me. “Because of the fiscal and geopolitical opportunity costs, it is not in our national interest to remain, and we can reasonably tell ourselves that we’ve done enough. But when we do pull out, we’ll leave behind unfulfilled promises and human tragedy for which we will be culpable.”

The current U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been guided by the Trump administration’s South Asia strategy, which was announced last August. It calls for bombing the Taliban while pushing the militant group to talk with the Afghan government, and simultaneously exerting pressure on Pakistan, which is believed to have some influence over the Taliban. The U.S. says it will remain in the country until the Afghan government takes full control of its territory. That could take some time: The Kabul government controls about 65 percent of the country’s districts, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a congressionally appointed watchdog that oversees the U.S. effort in the country, including most of its population centers, but the Taliban remains firmly in control of the rural areas and about 12 percent of the country’s districts (the rest are contested). This policy, which President Donald Trump assented to despite his own reservations about keeping troops in Afghanistan, is the latest in several strategies the U.S. has tried in the country.