According to The Australian, an hour south of Kabul, Afghanistan, a secret ceasefire was recently agreed upon between a Taliban commander and an Afghan army officer whom NATO forces had trained to fight the Taliban.
Their deal was simple: instead of fighting one another, they agreed to “share intelligence on NATO’s military operations.” This not only gives them both some measure of assurance that they won’t kill each other but also allows them to work together, to track and “loot NATO supply convoys,” then divvy up “the proceeds.”
Lieutenant Mohammad Wali, the Afghan army officer who made the agreement, was part of the security force NATO was counting on to pick up slack created from the U.S. military’s precipitous pullout under Obama. In fact, NATO’s plan was to soon have “three-quarters of the [Afghan] population… under the control of the Afghan national security forces.” Yet it’s beginning to look as though the Afghan army’s control may be no different than the Taliban’s.
Did Obama’s foreign policy advisers forget that these two factions–Afghans in the army and Afghans in the Taliban–have more in common with each other than they ever will with the aims of NATO?
No wonder Afghans fear chaos and Taliban rule after the U.S. withdrawal is complete.
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