Stephen Young: The US-Taliban treaty does not address the future of Afghanistan

Stephen Young, Global Executive Director of Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism and author of Moral Capitalism and The Road to Moral Capitalism and The Theory and Practice of Associative Power: CORDS in the Villages of Vietnam 1967 – 1972, explains his concerns about the recently signed US-Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan peace agreement. 

Young explains the contents of the newly signed peace agreement on Secure Freedom Radio:

“The first thing that I find stunning in this new- signed Saturday in Doha, Qatar- agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan is that it is only four pages long. So, you are 19 years into an incredibly complicated situation involving different factions, different ethnic groups, complexities, arguments, issues of who should be mobilized, etc. How are you going to knit together Afghanistan again in four pages? This document really does not address anything about the future of Afghanistan.

What does the plan commit the US and the Taliban to do?

The very important thing for Americans to recognize is that this is only an agreement between the US and “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” which is not recognized as the US as a state, and is known as the Taliban. There is no third party in this agreement. There is no government, there is no representation of any of the Afghans who oppose the Taliban, who don’t want to have sharia law become a theocracy over them. They are not party to this agreement. If I were in the Taliban’s shoes- this is an experience we’ve had before in Vietnam- I would think ‘I didn’t agree in this arrangement to be nice to your friends, why should I now?’ So, this arrangement is really between two parties, the Americans and the Islamic Emirate: the Americans agree to withdraw their remaining US forces from Afghanistan and the Islamic Emirate agrees it will not support anybody, either Afghan or coming to Afghanistan, who will use the soil of Afghanistan against the security of the US and its allies. So, in this agreement we have protected ourselves from another Osama bin Laden 9/11, but we’ve done nothing to protect the people of Afghanistan.

Listen to the full interview here