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** The U.S.-Taliban Negotiations: A Deadly Qatari Trap ([link removed])
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by Yigal Carmon • September 7, 2019 at 5:00 am
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* One can understand President Donald Trump's wish to leave Afghanistan. There are, however, ways to leave without losing people, respect, and allies. Mr. Trump, instead of leaving unilaterally, while reinforcing the democratically elected government in Kabul without boots on the ground, is unfortunately empowering his Taliban enemy by protracted negotiations, where America makes successive concessions and ultimately throws its Afghan allies under the bus.
* Afghan officials are the first to sense that the sellout of the Kabul government is impending, and are scurrying to defect to the Taliban (in July alone there were 800 defections).
* As opposed to what many Americans think, Qatar did the US no favors in building the base in the mid-1990s. It needed an American base for its own self-protection and this dependence still persists. Without this base, this Lilliputian energy Gulliver would be taken over by its neighbors (whether Iranian or Saudi) within a day. The US military establishment ignores this reality to its own detriment, and behaves as if America is in Qatar's debt rather than the reverse.
* Qatar is already threatening to limit potential operations against Iran from Al-Udeid, should they be needed, and Qatar's Tamim told Rouhani that "only countries [placed] along the coast [of the Persian Gulf] should keep security in the region."

Pictured: U.S. Marines at Camp Shorab on September 11, 2017 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images)

This is an edited and shortened version of an article recently in MEMRI. It is published here with the kind permission of the author.

What is happening in Afghanistan is already beyond grief. The United States is negotiating with the Taliban, without the Taliban first agreeing to a cease-fire as a precondition for talks, and although President Trump has emphatically announced his determination to withdraw from the country, American soldiers are still being killed (in recent days, three American servicemen died). [1]

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