Context-US President Donald Trump late Saturday announced he had cancelled a secret meeting at Camp David, his official retreat in Maryland, with Taliban leaders and the President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani besides calling off peace talks between the US and the Taliban that had appeared to be nearing an agreement

• Trump scrapped talks with the Afghan armed group over the weekend after an American soldier was killed in a suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul last week

Background

Declaration of war

• This September 11 marks the 18th year since hijackers seized four US airliners, plowing three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the fourth into a field in southern Pennsylvania.
• The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and deranged our national politics.
• In the fraught months that followed, US leaders declared one war after another, miring this country in conflicts from Central Asia to the Middle East. There is still no end in sight.
• The longest of these conflicts—in fact, the longest war in US history—is the one that George W. Bush launched against the Taliban less than a month after 9/11. He called it “Operation Enduring Freedom” and claimed its mission was “to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.”

U.S.-Taliban Negotiations

• In August 2017, President Trump announced what he termed a new South Asia strategy in anationally-televised address. Many Afghan and U.S. observers interpreted the speech and the policies it promised (expanded targeting authorities for U.S. forces, greater pressure on Pakistan,a modest increase in the number of U.S. and international troops) as a sign of renewed U.S.commitment.
• However, after less than a year of continued military stalemate, the Trump Administration in July 2018 reportedly ordered the start of direct talks with the Taliban that didnot include the Afghan government. This represented a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy, whichhad previously been to support an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” peace process.
• In September 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appointed former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad to the newly-created post of Special Representative forAfghanistan Reconciliation; Khalilzad has since met several times with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar (where the group maintains a political office). He has also had consultations with the Afghan, Pakistani, and other regional governments.
• After a six-day series of negotiations in Doha in late January 2019, Khalilzad stated that, “TheTaliban have committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would preventAfghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals,” in return for which U.S. forces would eventually fully withdraw from the country. After a longer series of talks that ended on March 12, 2019, Khalilzad announced that an agreement “in draft” had been reached on counterterrorism assurances and U.S. troop withdrawal. He noted that after the agreement is finalized, “the Taliban and other Afghans, including the government, will begin intra-Afghan negotiations on a political settlement and comprehensive ceasefire.”

Military and Security Situation

• Since early 2015, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan of 17,000 troops, known as “Resolute Support Mission” (RSM), has focused on training, advising, and assisting Afghan government forces. Combat operations by U.S. forces also continue and have increased in number since 2017. These two “complementary missions” comprise Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS). There are around 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, of which approximately 8,500 are part of RSM. The remaining 8,700 troops of RSM come from 38 partner countries.
• Since at least early 2017, U.S. military officials have publicly stated that the conflict is “largely stalemated.”  Arguably complicating that assessment, the extent of territory controlled or contested by the Taliban has steadily grown in recent years by most measures 
• . In its January 30, 2019, report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported that the share of districts under government control or influence fell to 53.8%, as of October 2018. This figure, which marks a slight decline from previous reports, is the lowest recorded by SIGAR since tracking began in November 2015; 12% of districts are under insurgent control or influence, with the remaining 34% contested.

ANDSF Development and Deployment
The effectiveness of the ANDSF is key to the security of Afghanistan. As of June 2019, SIGAR reports that Congress has appropriated at least $82.7 billion for Afghan security since 2002.34 Since 2014, the United States generally has provided around 75% of the estimated $5-6 billion a year to fund the ANDSF, with the balance coming from U.S. partners ($1 billion annually) and the Afghan government ($500 million).
Concerns about the ANDSF raised by SIGAR, the Department of Defense, and others include

• absenteeism, the fact that about 35% of the force does not reenlist each year, and the potential for rapid recruitment to dilute the force’s quality;
• widespread illiteracy within the force;
•  credible allegations of child sexual abuse and other potential human rights abuses;36 and
• casualty rates often described as unsustainable.

Total ANDSF strength was reported at 272,000 in May 2019, a decrease of about 11% since the previous quarter; the U.S. military stated that the reason for the decrease “is not known.”

Regional Dynamics: Pakistan and Other Neighbors
Regional dynamics, and the involvement of outside powers, are central to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Pakistan

• The neighboring state widely considered most important in this regard is Pakistan, which has played an active, and by many accounts negative, role in Afghan affairs for decades. 
• Pakistan’s security services maintain ties to Afghan insurgent groups, most notably the Haqqani Network, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) that has become an official, semiautonomous component of the Taliban.
• Afghan leaders, along with U.S. military commanders, attribute much of the insurgency’s power and longevity either directly or indirectly to Pakistani support; President Trump has accused Pakistan of “housing the very terrorists that we are fighting.U.S. officials have long identified militant safe havens in Pakistan as a threat tosecurity in Afghanistan, though some Pakistani officials dispute that charge and note the Taliban’s increased territorial control within Afghanistan itself.
• Pakistan may view a weak and destabilized Afghanistan as preferable to a strong, unified Afghan state (particularly one led by an ethnic Pashtun-dominated government in Kabul; Pakistan has a large and restive Pashtun minority). However, instability in Afghanistan could rebound to Pakistan’s detriment; Pakistan has struggled with indigenous Islamist militants of its own.
• Pakistan’s security establishment, fearful of strategic encirclement by India, apparently continues to view the Afghan Taliban as a relatively friendly and reliably anti-India element in Afghanistan. India’s diplomatic and commercial presence in Afghanistan—and U.S. rhetorical support for it—exacerbates Pakistani fears of encirclement. 

India

• Indian interest in Afghanistan stems largely from India’s broader regional rivalry with Pakistan, which impedes Indian efforts to establish stronger and more direct commercial and political relations with Central Asia.
• If power is transferred to the Taliban, there is no guarantee that the Taliban –– in pursuit of its mission of establishing Sharia –– will stick to any commitment. In that eventuality, Afghanistan could become a hotbed of internal strife and terrorism. Pakistan’s influence on a Taliban hostile to India could be a valuable asset for its Kashmir designs
• PM Imran Khan’s admission that Pakistan has 20,000-30,000 terrorists holed up in its soil may appear candid, but these could get refuge in a future Taliban-led Afghanistan as a proxy army against India, giving the false impression that Pakistan got rid of them. Thus, the winners in the emerging scenario are the Pakistan Army and ISI whose pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan seems to be fructifying with India losing influence.

Other nations

• Afghanistan largely maintains cordial ties with its other neighbors, including the post-Soviet states of Central Asia, though some warn that rising instability in Afghanistan may complicate those relations.
• In the past two years, multiple U.S. commanders have warned of increased levels of assistance, and perhaps even material support, for the Taliban from Russia and Iran, both of which cite IS presence in Afghanistan to justify their activities.
• Both nations were opposed to the Taliban government of the late 1990s, but reportedly see the Taliban as a useful point of leverage vis-a-vis the United States. Afghanistan may also represent a growing priority for China in the context of broader Chinese aspirations in Asia and globally.

Economy and U.S. Aid

Economic development is pivotal to Afghanistan’s long-term stability, though indicators of future growth are mixed. 

• Decades of war have stunted the development of most domestic industries, including mining. The economy has also been hurt by a steep decrease in the amount of aid provided by international donors.
• Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown an average of 7% per year since 2003, but growth slowed to 2% in 2013 due to aid cutbacks and political uncertainty about the post-2014 security situation. 
• Since 2015, Afghanistan has experienced a “slight recovery” with growth of between 2% and 3% in 2016 and 2017, though the increase in the poverty rate (55% living below the national poverty line in 2017 compared to 38% in 2012-2013) complicates that picture. 
• Social conditions in Afghanistan remain equally mixed. On issues ranging from human trafficking67 to religious freedom to women’s rights, Afghanistan has, by all accounts, made significant progress since 2001, but future prospects in these areas remain uncertain.

Conclusion

• Trump's decision to pull out of the talks is important because the US is finally admitting that talks with the Taliban will be fruitless as long as the Afghan government is kept out of it. The only way for long term peace to return to the war-torn nation is only possible if its people are involved in the decision-making process. When the elected government is not a party to the talks, how can this be achieved?