Font Size:     

Former US president Richard Nixon had very aptly remarked that one cannot seek peace with the enemy at any cost who is out to seek victory at any cost. Making peace is the acme of skill and the job of the true statesman. The US was not willing to make a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban nor were the Taliban ready to come the negotiating table with the US-installed Kabul government in the first few years following the fall of the Taliban regime. Peace talks between the US and the Taliban thus took a long way and both sides who wanted to twist each other’s arms. Sanity, however, prevailed and the peace parleys started afresh. The regional powers also welcomed the peace and it is hoped that peace would lead to the amelioration of the hapless Afghans on one hand the arrival of stability in the region on the other. But the US unilateral
decision to cancel the peace deal at the nick of time took the world in surprise and brought forth the harsh realities of realpolitik. However, peace process was again resumed and signaled the message that the US is determined to leave Afghanistan. The question here is not of the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan but the way the US is withdrawing from the country and the situation that would follow in the post US withdrawal environment. The element of precipitousness on the part of the US is mind boggling and this issue has been highlighted in this paper. The US decision to withdraw from a highly volatile zone of war inconclusively may deepen instability in the region that may foil all the efforts of searching peace instead. This has happened in Afghanistan time and
again in the past as well and the same may be repeated once again. If that happened, it will lead to strengthening the belief that we learn from history that we do not learn from history. This hypothesis has been dilated upon in this paper.