Reality of the Doha deal

I am surprised by how many people the world over are falling for this US and Western media nonsense that the Taliban thrashed the hell out of America and took them by surprise.

All you have to do is read the Doha Agreement signed in 2020 between former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the Taliban leadership and you will come to realize that a lot of the so-called Taliban miracle was actually staged. The Doha Agreement was actually signed and sealed on February 29, 2020. Moreover, the text of the agreement was unanimously adopted by the United Nations. So what is all this pretence that America and the West didn’t know what was already agreed? What is happening today was negotiated between the US and the Taliban. The Taliban ‘conquered’ Kabul as part of the agreement with the US.

In the same agreement, the Americans promised to release 5,000 detained Taliban soldiers so that they could rejoin the Taliban movement. The Americans also pledged to lift all sanctions against the Taliban regime in order to allow them to settle without there being an economic disaster. “The USA and the Taliban” says the Doha Agreement, “will seek positive relations with each other.”

One cannot say that the Taliban took over Afghanistan and its cities leaving everyone surprised. All they did was implement the terms of the Doha Agreement which was, I repeat, created by the USA. No wonder the Indian trained army of Afghanistan deserted and joined the Taliban because after the Doha agreement, they must have known what was coming. What is called the ‘rapid’ Taliban victory is not really a surprise. What is surprising is that the Americans did not plan their departure well in time and properly. But then don’t forget that with such perfidious people, it could be deliberate. The only surprise is the inept and seemingly incompetent departure of the US from Kabul.

You might discover in the fullness of time that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will help America counter Russian and Chinese moves in the area. A senior American has also said that if the situation in Afghanistan seems to be spiraling out of control, America could move its troops there again. They did this in Iraq; they did this in Syria. Why not in Afghanistan?

Now you see the lies and duplicity of America and the naiveté of those who believe their propaganda. I do hope that Pakistan realizes that these American shenanigans could easily turn on Pakistan. So, we have to tread very carefully. They have been trying to put the blame on Pakistan for their defeat in Afghanistan and seeming to punish Pakistan will suit America – for let’s face it, Doha Agreement or no, America was defeated. If not, there would have been no need for a Doha Agreement.

I will have more to write on the dangers to Pakistan later, but we all have to be super vigilant. One should not forget that in its blame game, America keeps parroting that Pakistan took $20 billion from it. This is all balderdash. Nothing was ‘given’ to us. In all those years, Pakistan kept its doors open for America to send its goods from Karachi port to Afghanistan for which our annual bill was $300 million.

So two-faced is America that to push Afghanistan over the edge (which will give them an excuse to intervene again), they have now frozen its foreign exchange in the US. This, my friends, is outright theft. But they have stolen money like this from Pakistan in the past. What surprises me is how tamely we take it. If we were to steal all the aid money which we have to return to them and say, “Go to hell, we are not paying; you owe us this money for you have caused us much more in losses,” we could succeed if some other countries joined us and we formed a club of US debtors. Then the US will be on the backfoot. If only one country did it, the US would retaliate severely. But the leadership of developing countries is so pathetic that if you made this suggestion to them, they would tremble.

Enough about Afghanistan and the mess that has primarily been created there by the US and its Nato allies. Do you think they have learnt a lesson this time? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Forget America for they can’t learn. What can we learn from this? Number one, we should think ten times before believing what America claims, for it could be propaganda. If we believe, we will then make perfect fools of ourselves once more. Two, never join somebody else’s war, as Imran Khan says. It comes back to bite you. Three, we should revisit our habit of sympathizing with our Muslim ‘brethren’ because our Muslim ‘brethren’ hardly ever sympathize with us. Don’t get carried away by the occasional few million dollars they have given us to help us tide over short-term difficulty. Over the years we have helped them politically, diplomatically, morally and sometimes militarily, which is worth much more than the few million dollars they have given us.

Four, stop flaunting the fact that you are America’s ally – or ‘most allied ally’ for that matter. By now it should have been a matter of embarrassment.

The writer is a veteran journalist, political analyst and author.

Email: humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com