The Doha Peace Deal was an agreement signed between the Taliban and the United States in 2020 in Doha, Qatar. The primary objective of this agreement was to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, which had lasted for close to two decades. The peace clearly stipulated the fighting restrictions for both the Taliban and the U.S. It also provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban’s counter-terrorism commitments. Initially, the U.S. agreed to a reduction of its force level from 13,000 to 8,600 within 135 days, followed by a full withdrawal and lifting of economic sanctions as long as the Taliban group held to its end of the agreement. However, insurgent attacks against the Afghanistan security forces surged in the aftermath of the Doha Peace Deal, with thousands being killed. Following the full evacuation of NATO forces by the U.S. in August 2021, the Taliban took control of the country by force. A retrospective analysis of the Doha peace deal reveals significant deficiencies in the peacebuilding process, hindering the achievement of sustainable peace.
To begin with, the agreement failed to adopt a comprehensive approach to peacebuilding as a process. Instead, the focus of the Doha Peace Deal was predominantly on immediate goals such as the lifting of the economic sanctions and the withdrawal of NATO forces. It is worth noting that the comprehensive approach to peacebuilding as a process is based on the view of conflict as progression and that peacebuilding is made up of multiple functions, roles, and activities (Lederach, 1997, p. 66). The conceptualization of peacekeeping as a progressive approach corresponds to the dynamic elements that create and sustain conflict resolution along the continuum of constructive transformation over time. Without addressing the deep-seated issues contributing to the Afghanistan war, the Doha Peace Deal left underlying tensions and structural challenges unaddressed. What the peace agreement needed was practical mechanisms by which the vision of a peaceful Afghanistan would define the country’s response to the long-standing conflict instead of the crisis and its dynamics defining the trajectory of the peace negotiations.
Additionally, the Doha Peace Deal failed to integrate the procedural and structural lines essential for a sustainable peacebuilding paradigm. Regarding the root causes of the Afghanistan war, the U.S. forces went to Afghanistan to wage a necessary war of self-defense. The international coalition led by the U.S. executed the attack because their Taliban hosts had given them a safe haven in Afghanistan. In an effort to call for a cease-fire, the U.S. and the Taliban signed the Doha Peace Deal. The essence of this agreement rested on procedural issues, such as a reduction in violence and troop withdrawals, without addressing the underlying structural challenges faced by Afghanistan. This approach was contrary to the provisions of the integrated framework, which emphasizes the natural and crucial overlap between procedural and structural lenses as fundamental elements of a broad peacebuilding paradigm (Lederach, 1997, p. 79). The integrated framework comprises five elements: root causes, crisis management, prevention, vision for the well-being of future generations, and focus on creating a transformed society. Of the five, the Doha agreement only addressed the crisis management aspect by focusing on the immediate issues affecting the population. In order to address the structural component of the integrated framework, the Doha peace agreement needed to comprehensively factor in the social, political, and economic aspects of the affected population and address the issues systemically.
Another deficiency of the Doha Peace Deal revolves around the failure to employ a system’s approach to conflict analysis. Mac Ginty and John (2022) posit that the elements of a conflict interact like a system, with each part reinforcing other parts of the entire system. This means that there are no quick impacts or fixes in most complex conflicts, as multiple parts of the system need to change before the entire system of the conflict changes (Mac Ginty and Anthony, 2022, p. 57). In terms of the system’s approach to conflict analysis, the Doha Peace Deal overlooked the broader causes of the long-standing conflict. It did not take into account the multiple interacting factors, namely political instability, Taliban insurgency, ethnic and tribal divisions, religious extremism, poverty, weak governance structures, and economic challenges. As a result, the peace agreement gave rise to a blame orientation that contributed to more isolation between the Taliban group and the Afghanistan government. The deal’s limited attention, particularly to social justice and human rights, allowed for the perpetuation of conditions that future compromised the well-being of the Afghan community following the insurgent attacks in the aftermath of the Doha Peace Deal. A positive approach to address this deficiency would involve ensuring that the end result of the agreement is aimed at developing a local capacity for peace that can be supported and expanded in the long term.
In conclusion, the Doha Peace Deal sought to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, which had lasted for close to two decades. However, its deficiencies in adopting progressive peacebuilding, limitations in providing a holistic solution to the challenges of the Afghan community, and failure to grasp the interconnectedness of the conflict hindered the achievement of sustainable peace.
References
Mac Ginty, Roger, and Anthony Wanis-St John, eds. Contemporary Peacemaking: Peace Processes, Peacebuilding and Conflict. Springer Nature, 2022.
Lederach, John Paul. “Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies.” Washington, DC: USIP (1997).
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