The Doha Deal; How the US abandoned Afghanistan!

The secret US talks with the Taliban and the resulting “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” aka the Doha Deal set the stage for Afghanistan’s dramatic collapse on August 15th of 2021. This agreement and the strategy the United States used to end this war will continue to be scrutinized for decades to come. Not long after this collapse, the Ukraine war began and US and NATO, who left Afghanistan due to ‘war fatigue’ engaged this new theatre with a renewed energy and sense of purpose.  Shoaib Rahim was a member of the government peace delegation for Afghanistan and spent the last two years of the republic preparing for the peace negotiations only to realize that deals and agreements had already been made on the government’s behalf by the powers that be. He will share with us his first-hand observations of the final months of the Republic, how he has grown to distrust externally driven political roadmaps and to try and draw certain parallels between Afghanistan and the on-going war in Ukraine.  

 

 

Shoaib Rahim is the former Senior Advisor to Afghanistan State Ministry for Peace, closely involved in the peace negotiations between the government and the Taliban. He also served in many public sector roles such as the Acting Mayor of Kabul and Senior Advisor to the Minister of Defense. He is a Duke University Alumni, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Visiting Scholar at The New School in New York.  An Associate Professor of Practice at the American University of Afghanistan’s Business Department, he has recently resettled in Toronto and is co-authoring a book on the collapse of Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces despite two decades of international investment and the sacrifices made in blood and treasure.