Roshan Noorzai
Waheed Faizi
VOA News
March 1, 2024
WASHINGTON — Four years after the signing of the Doha agreement, the U.S. and Taliban accuse each other of violating its terms, while analysts say that the agreement was “flawed” and has had “disastrous” outcomes for Afghans.
“The Taliban have not fulfilled their commitments in the Doha agreement,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday in a news briefing in response to a question from VOA’s Afghan Service.
“The Taliban have also not fulfilled their Doha commitment to engage in meaningful dialogue with fellow Afghans leading to a negotiated settlement, an inclusive political system,” she said.
After seizing power in 2021, the Taliban established an all-male Taliban caretaker cabinet and rejected calls to form an inclusive government.
Jean-Pierre added that the U.S. would hold the Taliban to their commitment and work “tirelessly every day to ensure that this set of commitments is fulfilled.”
The Taliban, however, accused the U.S. of “violating” the agreement.
“If you have read the agreement, it is written that the U.S. would normalize its relations with the future government in Afghanistan, remove the sanctions and restrictions, and cooperate, which [the U.S. does] not,” spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Thursday in an interview with state-run TV in Afghanistan.
Mujahid, however, said that the two main objectives — the U.S. withdrawal and not allowing anyone to use Afghan soil against the U.S. and its allies — have been implemented.
The U.S.-Taliban peace deal, signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, 2020, paved the way for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
The agreement obliged the Taliban to cut their ties with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups and participate in intra-Afghan peace talks to decide on “the future political map of Afghanistan.”
Retired U.S. General David Petraeus, who served as the commander of U.S. forces in South Asia and then as director of the CIA, told VOA that the Taliban obviously had not complied with the deal.
“If they had, the leader of al-Qaida wouldn’t have been a couple of blocks from the presidential palace, in a building controlled by the Taliban in Kabul, the capital … despite the promise in the agreement not to allow them back on Afghan soil,” he added.
He said that the outcome of the implementation of the agreement was “very tragic, heartbreaking and disastrous,” as since the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan has been facing multiple crises.
The United Nations says that Afghanistan continues to experience one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
‘Disastrous for Afghan women’
The Taliban imposed repressive measures on women, including barring them from attending high schools and universities, traveling long distances without a male companion, working with public and nongovernmental organizations, and going to gyms and parks.
Shukria Barakzai, a former Afghan diplomat and member of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan parliament, told VOA that the Doha agreement was “disastrous for Afghan women, as nothing related to human rights, women’s rights and women’s achievements from 2001 to 2021 were referred to in the agreement.”
She added that the agreement paved the way for the return of repressive rules against women introduced when the Taliban were in power in the late 1990s.
Before the ouster of the Taliban by the U.S. in 2001, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male chaperone, work outside their homes, or attend school.
The international community has repeatedly called on the Taliban to respect women’s rights and form an inclusive government as conditions for their recognition.
No country has yet officially recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, although China has accepted the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador in Beijing.
‘Flawed in almost every way’
Annie Pforzheimer, a former U.S. acting deputy assistant secretary of state for Afghanistan, told VOA that there should have been “some kind of international guarantee” to prevent the Taliban’s return.
“But instead, what happened was a withdrawal that happened before the right circumstances were in place,” she said.
The agreement was “flawed in almost every way, in terms of implementation,” Pforzheimer said, adding that “the only people who complied with it were the international forces, and in fact the United States withdrew its forces and obliged NATO to do the same.”
She added that she was concerned about the future of Afghanistan, especially for Afghan girls and women who are “denied an education and a future.”
“Right now, there’s not much hope, but I think that Afghans working together will understand that they are in greater numbers than the Taliban,” Pforzheimer said.
Noshaba Ashna of the VOA Afghan Service contributed to this report, which originated in the VOA Afghan Service.
Ayaz Gul
Tolo News: The United States Department of State says that the Doha Agreement led to the empowerment of the Islamic Emirate and the weakening of America’s partners in Afghanistan. Mathew Miller, the spokesperson for the department, while referring to the interim government’s actions against terrorist groups, also says that the Islamic Emirate has violated the Doha Agreement..”In our view, this agreement empowered the Taliban, weakened our partners in the Afghan government, and committed the United States to withdraw its forces without any clear plan for what should come next. The Taliban have not fulfilled their commitments under the Doha Agreement,” said Mathew Miller, The spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. 
Ariana: Ireland claimed their first test victory when they beat fellow minnows Afghanistan by six wickets on Friday in a one-off match in Abu Dhabi after skipper Andy Balbirnie took charge in the run chase with an unbeaten half-century. 
Ayaz Gul
8am: With the fall of the previous government and the return of the Taliban group to power, the pace of holding international conferences on Afghanistan has accelerated. These conferences have aimed to attempt better engagement with the Taliban. If the world did not intend to engage with the Taliban, it would not have devoted all its efforts to holding conferences that have mostly been fruitless. Many of these conferences have been regional, with regional countries and Afghanistan’s neighbors participating, discussing the transition from a purely Taliban regime to a mixed system. Some conferences have been international, with major world powers from the East and West, including the United Nations, coming together to negotiate a way out of the current impasse in Afghanistan. Representatives from Afghanistan, sometimes from the Taliban and sometimes from anti-Taliban forces, have attended these conferences. However, some conferences have been held in the absence of both sides. 
Khaama: The ambassador and special representative of Iran for Afghanistan stated that it is planned for the border blockade of that country with Afghanistan to be in the form of a concrete wall. Kazemi Qomi, Iran’s special representative for Afghanistan, in an interview with the Iranian news agency ISNA regarding the issue of physical blockade of the border between Iran and Afghanistan, said that studies are underway on how to physically block the border. This Iranian diplomat reminded us that the border blockade with Afghanistan is not solely due to preventing the entry of illegal immigrants and combating human and drug trafficking, etc. He said, “Considering that the enemies of the people are seeking to strike us in various ways, including through the mobilization of proxy terrorist forces, we are not necessarily confronted with the demarcated borders of the two countries but with various terrorist elements at the border, which are supported by major powers that currently use both soft and hard power simultaneously to strike at us; therefore, we must take our border security and control more seriously.”