 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we discuss the developments in Afghanistan in the aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to suspend peace talks with the Taliban. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Burqais. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so as we know, Donald Trump yesterday announced, on Sunday announced that basically he was ending both the deal and the negotiations with the Taliban. And he claimed that this was due to the Taliban taking responsibility for the September 5th attacks in which one U.S. soldier was killed. So there's been a lot of speculation over this move, especially because this was right after there was an announcement that a deal was going to take place. So how do you see these discussions and this claim by Donald Trump? Yeah, I think there has also been this speculation that is going to be a Camp David meet between the Taliban and the United States. We of course don't know what the Afghan government and its role over there, but they have been kept out of this negotiation still now. The U.S. has been negotiating with Taliban separately and with the Afghan government separately, but the two have not met face to face. The question that arises, if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at all the surrounding countries, the United States is not there. The United States is really 12,000 kilometers away. So what is the United States discussing with Taliban? Is it discussing the future of Afghanistan? If that is so, the Afghan government is not there? Neither are the countries around Afghanistan. Or is it discussing how U.S. will disengage from Afghanistan? Looking at this issue, this picture, it does appear that the United States is not really discussing Afghanistan's future. United States is discussing how it can withdraw with face, so to say, from Afghanistan. And if Taliban makes that difficult, then of course the U.S. is in difficulty in saying that they have now resolved to have peace in Afghanistan. They have done their task and that's why Mr. Trump is pulling his troops out. I think that is the cosmetic problem they have when Taliban attacks Afghan government forces and also kills the U.S. soldiers. And it's that cosmetics, or shall we say, saving of the face. That is really the crux of the issue. I must say that, you know, as somebody had said, Helene of Troy's face was the most expensive face in history. I would say that U.S. face saving in Afghanistan is also, I think, going to be as, shall we say, expensive as Helene of Troy's face that only sank some hundreds of ships. This is going to be, this has been almost a bottomless pit in terms of draining of resources. But looking at the real issue, which is the Afghan war, it's very clear the U.S. either today or tomorrow or maybe day after is going to withdraw out of Afghanistan. And the pieces in Afghanistan will have to be picked by the Afghan people. Of course, Taliban is a player in that Afghan government. Maybe I don't know how it will survive in which form it will survive. And most importantly, countries around it, which is of course involves Pakistan. It involves Iran. It involves China. They're all contiguous countries. And also Turkmenistan, as well as Russia, who actually in Central Asia does provide a kind of, shall we say, stability to the region as a whole. And in parallel to the Afghanistan talks between the United States and the Taliban, Taliban has been meeting Russia, Iran, other countries in Moscow. There has been another peace process, which really looks at the future of Afghanistan post, shall we say, United States leaving. I think it's very clear that United States is going to leave Afghanistan. The question is, can it leave Afghanistan, unlike, shall we say, leaving Vietnam, where it actually evacuated from hotel tops on helicopters? Or will it be allowed to save face while we're drawing from Afghanistan? I do not think the U.S. has either the appetite or the money to continue an indefinite war in Afghanistan. And I would also say, this has always been the problem with Afghanistan. Any country which wants to subjugate Afghanistan has to look at the size, the terrain, and look at it and say, is that something that externally we can go and control? And the British tried, failed. And subsequently, all efforts that people have tried have failed. It's a very rugged and a very large piece of land. So you know, it's not something which is ever going to be easy to come and quote unquote colonize. And the American efforts in Afghanistan was really that of a quasi colonization that we can control through firepower the entire country, and we can hold it indefinitely. That is certainly proving to be wrong. And certain observers have also pointed out that if we take Trump's statements at face value, it is highly ironic that 18 years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, we would have had the sight of the Taliban actually coming to Camp David and talking with the U.S. President, which actually I think calls into question the larger legacy of the so-called this war effort as well, if there's anything like they spent 18 years and it's almost a full circle. Let's look at what that world trade towers attack was all about. This was really done by a set of people who were origins were Saudi Arabia. It wasn't Afghanistan. Bin Laden was sheltered by Taliban in Afghanistan. And it was possible for at that time to for the United States to tell Taliban, hand over bin Laden. And that's it. But they wanted something which is far more demonstrative. If the United States had asked Taliban to hand over bin Laden, I'm not sure they would have handed him over. But at least there would have been a cause to say that's why we fought against Taliban. But they wanted to get into Afghanistan, take Kabul, and make this a demonstration that we will take revenge if we are attacked like this. So it was it became less about bin Laden and more about telling the world that America will not accept a blow like this. So any attack on America will be treated in this particular way. So the U.S. who agrees in this was really more important than shall we say taking the justice to those who had perpetrated the World Trade Tower attack. So I think that is one part of it. But the problem is if you calculate in this fashion, then have you taken over? Have you thought through the consequences of taking over Afghanistan? And that's what the United States found that taking out the country's government is easy, but holding the country, that is really much more difficult. And that's Iraq. That is also Afghanistan. I think that's increasingly issue that destruction of a country is much easier than colonizing the country in the 20th, 21st century. And that's what the United States really learned from this exercise. And you're right, the cosmetic, again, the optics of after the World Trade Towers, which essentially caused the Afghan, shall we say, entry of the United States forces into Afghanistan. That meeting up, seeking peace with the same force which you had deposed at that time, 18 years earlier, saying that now you're bringing justice to sit with them in Camp David. This is really as optics would have looked very bad indeed. But I think Trump is willing to face that if he's allowed to come out of Afghanistan in a way that at least for one or two years, Taliban will not rock the boat too hard. After that, they will take the Afghan government would be his position. But I think that shall we say face saving is something he doesn't look that Taliban is willing to give him. And exactly what you said that attack shows that they really don't give too much about the US negotiations. And there is they have serious doubts have been raised whether there was such a photo of being planned in Camp David or not. Was it purely a trial balloon? Was it just something which was just meant for public consumption? But there is really no substance to it. But I'm not getting into that because we never really go to learn what the American government thought a little thing. But some total of it is I think it's a nearing the end of US Afghan misadventure and that there is really no longer a viable, shall we say strategy that the US has. Yes, the only strategy it could have is if it is willing to talk to US, it's willing to talk to China, Russia and Iran and Pakistan with the Afghan government and the Taliban to look at how peace can be achieved in the region. The peace in Afghanistan is different from US leaving Afghanistan. For the US the only issue is how can we leave Afghanistan with our pride intact. That's the only issue. The issue is not peace in Afghanistan as it was not about World Trade Towers and vengeance or justice. It was really about showing the world if the US is attacked it has consequences and it doesn't matter on whom the consequences fall. And in a few days the Afghan elections are also set to come up and considering the situation on the map where we have the Taliban dominating so much of the country, do you see there is any meaningful possibility of an establishment so to speak that can actually deal with this issue in the country? You know Kabul probably controls about 20% of the territory of Afghanistan and probably not really comfortably. Its forces are going to have problems and unless they are propped up with external support and money Kabul does not seem to have really a sustainable shall we say possibility unless it is showed up by as I said its neighbors. So that's going to be one part of the puzzle. How do you have a sustainability for an Afghan government which has been almost entirely depending on the firepower of the US forces as well as the money that the US government has given. So if that goes away that prop goes kicked out as it were which seems to be happening or which is in the offing then how does the Kabul government survive irrespective of the elections and how shall we say credible will these elections be these are open questions. My understanding is that if we want to stabilize this region particularly Afghanistan then looking at its geostrategic position as well as its terrain every country in the region has to work together. It is not a place a zero sum game would work and if all of us work together including the Indian government including the Pakistan government China Russia as well as Iran then there is a possibility of a solution. We really need to look at all of this today in the framework of collective security rather than as competitive security. Unfortunately India and the United States both in Afghanistan tend to take a more competitive shall we say internationalism if you can use that word rather than a collaborative and a cooperative strategy for peace in the region. Afghanistan is a classic example but a competitive politics will not work precisely because of what we already talked about the terrain and the fact that all this country surround it and it's also a patchwork of different identities. So this is this is something that we have to think of new ways of looking at international politics itself and I think the old framework of what comes as nation states and loss of one is again of the other is a framework which really is bankruptcy can be seen enough most clearly in Afghanistan. Thank you Prabir. That's all we have time for today keep watching NewsClick.