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Before the complete withdrawal from Afghanistan?
US soldiers
Photo: MANPREET ROMANA / AFP
The letter from the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, reads like an instruction: Ghani should quickly make peace with the Taliban - otherwise the US would withdraw from the country on May 1st, as Washington did has already agreed with the Taliban.
Ghani and his government would be left to their own devices.
The palace in Kabul is outraged by the command-like tone of the leaked letter.
Ghani experiences the greatest humiliation of his tenure.
Will Afghanistan soon become an Islamic emirate again?
The head of state countered that with him there would be no transfer of power through "plans of others," meaning the Taliban.
The radical Islamists want to install an interim government.
That would be Ghani's political end, but also the end of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
But how far can Kabul stand against its protective power, the USA?
The country depends militarily and economically on the drip of Washington.
The new US President Joe Biden wants to close the issue of Afghanistan 20 years after the American-led invasion.
So far, however, there has been no rapprochement between the government and the Taliban.
It is unclear, for example, whether Afghanistan will be an Islamic emirate in the future or whether it will remain a democracy.
It is also unclear whether only one radical interpretation of Islam will soon dominate and whether minorities will still enjoy protection, for example the Shiite Hazara, many of whom are now part of the educated elite.
A forced peace
In the province of Samangan, 100,000 women from 15 republics have signed on a roll of white cloth why they reject the return of the Taliban.
Your concerns go unheeded.
Meanwhile, Vice President Amrullah Saleh is openly reluctant to oppose pressure from Washington: “The USA is responsible for 2,500 soldiers in the country, we are responsible for 35 million citizens.
We will never accept a forced, imposed peace. "
After the fall of the Taliban, Saleh was trained by the Americans as the head of the Afghan intelligence service.
He stands for the resistance against the Taliban, which he believes to be controlled from Pakistan.
Should the Islamists take over power in Kabul again and are not ready to share it, we will still be able to hear from him.
The government in Kabul becomes a disruptive factor
The US now regards the Afghan government primarily as a disruptive factor on the way to an agreement with the Taliban.
In Blinken's letter there is no longer any mention of the democracy built together, of the right to vote, gender equality, the republican constitution.
The US only wants to "accelerate the talks on a negotiated solution and a ceasefire".
Flashing threatens, without the US the Taliban would take large parts of the country, the disaster of the Soviet Union's disaster of 1989 could be repeated.
In other words, Ghani's government was lost one way or another.
The Americans, on the other hand, are largely in agreement with the Taliban.
Militarily one is already cooperating in the fight against the "Islamic State".
Violence is the Taliban's strongest argument
Not a single US soldier lost a life in combat in Afghanistan in 2020.
But thousands of Afghans died or were wounded.
The Taliban are killing politicians, journalists and activists who are responsible for building a diverse, modern society.
Persistently high levels of violence are their greatest leverage in the peace talks.
On Wednesday, the Afghan Ministry of Education banned all girls over the age of twelve from singing the national anthem and other songs in the presence of men.
One could say that Kabul is preparing for the entry of the ultra-conservative Taliban.
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