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On paper, the United States is committed to withdrawing its last 2,500 troops from Afghanistan less than 10 weeks from now, on May 1. Thats under a deal the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban, the Islamic guerrilla group fighting the Kabul government.

But its far from certain that will happen. Neither the Taliban, the Afghan government nor the United States have kept all their commitments under the year-old agreement. The Taliban promised to reduce attacks on government troops and civilian officials; it hasnt. The Afghan government promised to enter serious peace talks with the Taliban, but it has dragged its feet. The United States promised to begin lifting international sanctions against the Taliban, but when the war escalated and the peace talks deadlocked, the U.S. held back.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has continued pushing the governments underperforming army out of big swaths of territory. And someone presumably the Taliban has launched a remorseless campaign of assassinations against judges, journalists and teachers, especially women. The Taliban denies responsibility, but few believe the denial.

As a result, President Bidens path toward ending a war that began three presidents ago has grown more difficult.

Now he faces a decision: Should he withdraw most or all of the troops, as candidate Biden said he wanted, at the risk of seeing Afghanistan descend into a bloodbath?

Should he keep the 2,500 troops in place and announce that they will leave as soon peace negotiations are on track, but not before?

Or, as some former officials argue, should Biden send more troops until a final peace settlement is reached a potential recipe for an open-ended stay?

Its tempting for war-weary Americans to look at Afghanistan and say: We lost more than 2,400 troops, we spent more than $2 trillion, and we failed; its time to walk away.

But the United States still has interests in that part of the world, including the containment of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups roaming the region.

After 19 years, its still worth trying to bring this tragic misadventure to an end in a way that avoids needless damage along the way.

There are three basic options.

One is to stay and perhaps even make the U.S. military presence a little bigger. Thats essentially what a blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended this month.

We know what will happen if we leave on 1 May, he warned. If we walk away, well leave behind chaos, if not civil war.

He argued that a continued U.S. military presence is critical to inducing the Taliban to negotiate, since getting foreign forces out of Afghanistan has long been the groups top priority.

At the other end of the spectrum, one of Dunfords former advisors, Afghanistan expert Carter Malkasian, says that its past time to get out.

When I look at the costs, leaving now is more compelling than ever before, he told the Washington Post recently. Malkasian argues that keeping U.S. troops in the country is unlikely to persuade the Taliban to enter negotiations as long as theyre making gains on the ground, and the presence of 2,500 U.S. troops hasnt stopped that.

But theres also a middle option: Postpone the withdrawal for six months, negotiate a new timetable for the peace talks, and try a more energetic diplomacy (which has come back into style after four years in the wilderness) including soliciting help from neighboring countries like Russia and China to press the Taliban to negotiate seriously.

The peace process is the best option for a decent outcome, even though its the least likely to succeed, Laurel Miller, a former State Department envoy to Afghanistan, told me. You need a six-month extension to have any possibility of getting it back on track.

The best U.S. leverage over the rebels isnt its military presence, she said; its the ability to show them they will be international pariahs if they seize power by force.

We know that they want to have the sanctions lifted, added Barnett Rubin, another former State Department advisor. We can begin that process as a positive incentive for negotiations.

The extension should be a one-time experiment, not an open-ended stay, he added. If it doesnt begin to work by Nov. 1, then we have to leave. And we have to tell people in advance that thats what were going to do.

That sounds like a sensible answer. After 19 years and more than 2,400 dead, we have no responsibility to continue propping up a government that cant be made to work. But theres still a moral argument for trying to leave the right way for doing what we can to avoid needless chaos on the way out the door.

Six months is not forever. It might just be enough time to give peace negotiations a chance.

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Column: Can we actually pull out of Afghanistan on time? - Los Angeles Times

There are just 10 weeks left of America's war in Afghanistan at least on paper.

Why it matters: Donald Trump pledged a full troop withdrawal by May 1 as part of a deal struck one year ago with the Taliban. President Biden must now decide whether he can bear the risks of honoring it.

The big picture: Under the deal, the Taliban promised to reduce violence, engage in peace talks with the Afghan government (which was not a party to the Trump-Taliban deal), and ensure that Afghanistan doesnt again become a haven for terror groups like al-Qaeda.

The state of play: The Pentagon has accused the Taliban of shirking its commitments but says the deal remains operative. Biden also kept on the man who negotiated it, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Biden has three broad choices.

1. Get out on time.

2. Pull out of the deal and return to a conditions-based approach.

3. Seek an extension to the deadline and put renewed emphasis on the peace process.

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Biden has only bad options as Afghanistan withdrawal deadline nears - Axios

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The U.S. government has faced serious challenges in helping Afghanistan build its capacity to prepare for, observe, administer, and adjudicate elections. As the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) put it:Afghanistan is among the most challenging environments in the world [in which] to hold elections. It is a nascent democracy with an ongoing violent insurgency, an unverifiable number of eligible voters, many of whom are illiterate, and a country spread over harsh terrain. Corruption is pervasive, rule of law is tenuous where it has any hold at all, and impunity for election-related violence and fraud is the norm.1 Since 2001, the international community has spent at least $1.2 billionincluding at least $620 million contributed by the U.S. governmentsupporting Afghanistans electoral process, including seven separate elections.2 This report was written to help policymakers and program implementers understand the challenges Afghanistan faces in holding its elections. The report covers more than 15 years of electoral assistance in Afghanistan. Its lessons and recommendations are intended to help U.S. government departments and agencies as they plan and implement electoral support to Afghanistan and other countries around the world. While peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government take shape, this report can inform U.S. electoral assistance during those talks (if they are prolonged) and any U.S. electoral assistance that may come after a possible peace settlement. Given the demand for reform since the 2014 presidential elections, much of this reports analysis revolves around key events and processes of the last six years.

Each chapter of this report focuses on a specific topic related to Afghan elections. The conclusion includes overall findings, lessons, and recommendations.

The Introduction provides an overview of the Afghan and international stakeholders involved in administering elections, their various roles and responsibilities, and how U.S. and other donors have supported efforts to hold elections and build sustainable election institutions.

Chapter 2 describes the challenge of administering elections in an insecure environment, and how election officials and security forces struggle to make the country secure enough for credible elections to take place.

Chapter 3 examines the capacity of Afghanistans Independent Election Commission (IEC) and raises concerns about its ability to manage and administer elections with transparency and accountability.

Chapter 4 details Afghanistans history with voter registration that has made it vulnerable to fraud, as well as challenges to the countrys recent attempt to create a national voter registry.

Chapter 5 describes the prevalence of fraud in the months and years leading up to an election, particularly how staff at Afghanistans two election commissions can be both perpetrators and victims of fraud.

Chapter 6 examines the effect of fraud on the dispute resolution process after an election, and how fraud can be enabled and compounded by a lack of capacity and transparency at the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

Chapter 7 details the Afghan governments adoption of technology at polling centers to increase the credibility of elections, and how delays and other challenges have reduced the intended benefit of the election technology.

Chapter 8 explores the challenges faced by election observers to serve as a check on electoral fraud and malpractice as they struggle to hire, train, deploy, and oversee qualified observers who can access polling centers in an insecure environment.

Chapter 9 describes how the U.S. governments sporadic support of Afghan elections, in which donor engagement and funding ramps up shortly before an election but drops off immediately afterward, has undermined efforts to help the Afghan government build sustainable election institutions and implement critical reforms to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Chapter 10 concludes the report with SIGARs findings, lessons, and recommendations.

To prevent Afghanistan from once more becoming a terrorist safe haven, the U.S. government has tried for years to help the country hold credible elections that result in legitimate government officials. However, the return on the U.S. governments $620 million investment in supporting Afghan elections has been poor. Afghan electoral stakeholders do not appear closer to credibly preparing for, administering, and resolving disputes for elections than they were in 2004, despite the hard work of many in the international community. While assistance has sometimes yielded improvements, they have yet to last beyond the end of each electoral cycle, when most donor support recedes. As a result, Afghanistans electoral institutions remain weak, which undermines the confidence of the Afghan public in its government. As USAID in Afghanistan observed in 2018, Elections are not yet perceived by the public as an effective way to influence public policy.3 Expectations among donors seem lower than ever. Given unprecedented insecurity, political gridlock, and uncertainty around the prospect of peace, donors seem relieved that elections are happening at all. As one U.S. embassy official told SIGAR, some of the U.S. governments greatest election successes are simply preventing worse outcomes, such as a cancelled election or a collapsed government.4 Several international officials working on Afghan elections have referred to their role as little more than firefighting.5 While the electoral process could eventually improve, the current coursemarked by timeline-based, sporadic cycles of supportwill force donors to continue reacting to crises rather than address systemic deficiencies. As it is currently structured, donor support is focused on achieving short-term goals, such as simply ensuring that elections are held, rather than achieving the long-term goal of creating a sustainable democratic process.

A key finding of this report is that building the electoral institutions, civil society organizations, political parties, and democratic traditions necessary for credible elections will require continuous engagement. However, moving donors away from intermittent support focused on short-term goals and toward a steady effort focused on long-term goals will require a significant shift in how electoral support is provided. If election assistance in Afghanistan continues to be important to U.S. policymakers, the coming 20202025 electoral cycleparticularly the next three yearswill be a critical time to stay engaged, politically and technically.

Nationwide provincial council and district council electionsas well as parliamentary elections in Ghazniwere supposed to take place alongside the 2019 presidential election, but were delayed to keep the presidential election on track. Mayoral elections are also expected in the near future. If all these elections take place before the constitutionally mandated 2023 parliamentary and 2024 presidential elections, donors may again be preoccupied with just making sure elections take place. In that case, there will not be an election cycle for the next five years; instead, electoral stakeholders will be continuously responsible for disparate but critical stages of six different elections throughout the next five years. This would constitute the most overwhelming electoral schedule in Afghanistans history. However, it is possible that there will be further delays. If so, the next three years may be relatively quiet for election stakeholders and well suited to the kind of steady electoral support recommended in this report.

While peace talks are ongoing, any intra-Afghan peace agreement that would necessitate an overhaul of the electoral or even constitutional framework could still be a long way off. Afghanistan will continue to need electoral assistance before, during, and after those talks are complete, assuming a deal is reached.

The findings, lessons, and recommendations below are intended to help the Congress and the executive branch as they consider how best to support the electoral process in Afghanistan and, more generally, in unstable environments elsewhere.

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Elections: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan (February 2021) - Afghanistan - ReliefWeb

KABUL, Afghanistan When his soon-to-be fiance, Najiba Hussaini, was killed in a Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul, Hussain Rezai didnt know how to grieve for her.

I had lost my love, but I wasnt allowed to mourn, said Mr. Rezai, a 33-year-old government employee. Though they had traveled to Daikundi Province to seek her parents approval to marry, they werent officially engaged, and he felt pressure to simply move on after her death.

It was July 2017 when a Taliban bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives, killing at least 24 people, including Ms. Hussaini, who was 28.

Thirteen months later, on the other side of the city, 40 students were killed when an Islamic State bomber detonated himself at a university entrance exam preparation center. Among those killed was Rahila Monji, 17, the youngest of nine siblings.

These women didnt know each other, but their lives were snuffed out by the same uncompromising violence that has killed thousands and left gaping holes in the lives of countless Afghans.

Yet Ms. Hussaini and Ms. Monjis loved ones were inspired to fulfill the same dream: to build public libraries memorializing the women they had lost.

Today, those libraries one in Kabul, the capital, and the other in Daikundi Province stand as symbols of the progress made toward gender equality and access to education in Afghanistan, where as many as 3.5 million girls are enrolled in school, according to a recent U.S. watchdog report, and where, as of 2018, one-third of the nations teachers were women.

But those gains have also been overshadowed by violent resistance. Education centers are routinely the targets of terrorist attacks and more than 1,000 schools have shut in recent years, according to UNICEF.

Now, as negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban slowly move forward in Qatar, many worry that a peace deal could mean that the progress Afghan women have made the last two decades will be lost. And the Talibans potential return to power is a grim reminder to the families of Ms. Hussaini and Ms. Monji that the legacy they created could soon unravel.

I never want the Taliban ideology to govern my people again, said Hamid Omer, Ms. Monjis brother. Where I was born, my village had to burn all the school textbooks available in our school. I am afraid we will face the same situation again.

As a student, Ms. Hussaini was so determined to succeed that she walked an hour and a half each way to and from her high school while also teaching part time, said her sister Maryam.

She did extraordinarily well, an impressive accomplishment for a person from Afghanistans poorest province, Daikundi, in the central highlands especially in a country where women and girls are marginalized by an education system often closed off to them by their families and Afghanistans patriarchal society.

They also face a constant threat from the Taliban, who in past years have burned down girls schools, threatened to kill female students and splashed acid in their faces.

After getting her bachelors degree in computer applications in India, Ms. Hussaini completed a masters degree in Japan. She then quickly landed a prestigious job in the governments Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, where she was commuting in a minibus with several of her colleagues the morning they were hit by the suicide bombing.

For years, Mr. Rezai said, he cried whenever he thought of Ms. Hussaini. It took me three years to change the shape of my grief into a positive thing, he said.

Ms. Hussaini had always said that Daikundi Province should have a library a bold ambition in a country of roughly 38 million people and only 100 public libraries, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Education.

In July 2019, he opened the Najiba Hussaini Memorial Library in Nili, Daikundis capital.

At first, the entire collection comprised only Ms. Hussainis 400 textbooks. But today it has more than 12,500 books, magazines and research reports most of which were donated.

The library is popular with young people, many of them students who are chronically short of educational resources, especially books.

Najiba is not dead, she breathes with all the girls and boys who come to her library and study, Mr. Rezai said.

Taliban negotiators in Qatar have said they support womens rights, but only under their interpretation of Islamic law, and any specific conditions of a power-sharing agreement have so far not addressed the rights of Afghan women in any detail.

A growing narrative has emerged that the country can either have womens rights at the cost of peace, or peace at the cost of womens rights, according to the watchdog report.

But some activists see a permanent cease-fire as a catalyst for furthering womens rights.

Women have been change makers not only for inclusivity of the peace process, but also for paving ways for reconciliation at the local level, said Metra Mehran, an organizer of the Feminine Perspectives Campaign, a social media initiative advocating for womens rights in Afghanistan.

She added, A cease-fire will give them the space to fight for their representation in the process and ensure their perspectives are reflected on policies and decisions.

In Kabul, Ms. Monji had similar ambitions to Ms. Hussaini. A voracious reader, especially of novels in Persian and English, Ms. Monji had always been full of strange ideas and strong ambitions.

When she told her brother, Mr. Omer, that she had placed fifth in her class in a practice run of annual exams, he offered her $1,000 if she placed first, half seriously saying they would use that money to open a free library in their community. Then she surprised him with her results: She was at the top of her class and insisted he keep their bargain.

The next day, in August 2018, the Mawoud Academy, where she was studying to prepare for college, was destroyed by an Islamic State suicide bomber. She was among the dozens killed.

Learning of the bombing, Mr. Omer and her other siblings began the frantic search known so well to families whose loved ones cannot be located after a deadly attack.

In the forensic department of the Kabul Police Department, Mr. Omer found a badly burned body wearing a watch like the one Ms. Monji owned. Another sister recognized the tattered dress it was their youngest sister.

Back at home, Ms. Monjis books were lined up on her desk, and Mr. Omer found the one she most recently had been reading: And the Mountains Echoed by the Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini.

Then he found her diary. It was just full of her simple wishes for peace and a better future, Mr. Omer said.

Normally for an Afghan funeral, a family slaughters several sheep and stages a feast for everyone they know, but as the siblings grieved together, Mr. Omer had a different idea.

At that moment I decided I would not feed people, he said. I would provide the money for a memorial library. It is what Rahila would have wanted.

Ms. Monjis family soon found a room on the upper floor of a mosque in their neighborhood in Kabul. As they built the librarys social media following, book donations poured in. The family went on to establish the Rahila Foundation, which gives scholarships to needy children and organizes personal development and skills training programs.

Now my sister saves the lives of hundreds of others, Mr. Omer said. Her soul is inside each of them.

After she was killed, Mr. Omer was so furious that he wanted to take up arms and kill some of the extremists himself. But when I calmed down, I thought, if I take up a gun like that, what is the difference between me and the terrorists?

He added, Establishing a library was a strong slap in the face to all the terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

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They Built Libraries to Honor Loved Ones, Women Felled by Bombings - The New York Times

Afghan women look at the skyline of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, September 14, 2020.

From 2002 to 2020, the U.S. government disbursed at least $787 million for programs to support Afghan women and girls. What progress did those funds buy and how easily could it all be lost?

Speaking at a Brookings Institution event last week to unveil his offices latest lessons learned report, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko put the reports release in context: We release it as the new administration faces a critical issue how the United States can continue to support Afghan women and girls at a time of great uncertainty about their nations future.

The 165-page report (plus annexes) is a comprehensive tour through nearly two decades of reconstruction work focused on women and girls in Afghanistan. The report found some success, but plenty of failure, too; much of it rooted in a lack of understanding (and subsequent lack of considerations of) local cultural contexts in the design and implementation of programs.

Since 2001, SIGAR notes significant progress in a variety of fields, from health and education metrics to political and economic participation. But the gains have been tempered, the report noted, by sociocultural norms and insecurity. In an ironic twist, while high-level political focus on gender issues in Afghanistan meant greater congressional and executive branch support, and significant funding, the political focus may also have reduced the scrutiny accorded to the design of some gender programs.

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And program design matters.

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Promoting womens rights in Afghanistan has been a goal of U.S. reconstruction efforts since 2002, but SIGAR found that some programs achieved better success than others. Some programs were designed based on assumptions that proved to be ill suited to the Afghan context, Sopko said in his remarks.

The Afghan context is a society as complex as societies the world over, burdened by history and a patriarchal culture. As Sopko highlighted in his remarks, the experiences of Afghan women are too often simplified in international eyes: either mini-skirt clad students of 1970s Kabul or women in dusty villages hidden under burqas in the 1990s. As we note in the report, such one-dimensional narratives can undermine even the most well-intentioned efforts to ensure women and girls are afforded basic human rights, Sopko said.

As in other societies, there exist in Afghanistan restrictive social and cultural norms relating to the behavior of women and girls. In Afghanistan, the report notes, these predate and transcend the Taliban. This is an important point to underscore: If the Taliban were to vanish entirely tomorrow, the difficulties faced by women in Afghanistan would remain. That said, if the Taliban were to return fully to power in Afghanistan, the gains made by Afghan women could too easily vanish.

Another of the reports key findings notes that historically, Afghan leaders efforts to advance womens rights have spurred backlash, especially in rural areas, and have been most successful when based on a broad social consensus. Walking the tightrope of progress without engendering a backlash might be an impossible task, but its a worthy endeavor.

In offering lessons, SIGAR highlights the value of U.S. and international pressure in advancing womens rights but also the necessity of U.S. officials developing and employing a deeper understanding of Afghanistans cultural contexts. The lessons also note that educating Afghan men and boys about gender equality is critical. This is as true in the mission to advance womens rights in Afghanistan as it is in the West.

In laying out the reports findings, a final point was worth highlighting: The effort to promote womens rights may be hampered by a growing narrative in Afghanistan that the country can either have womens rights at the cost of peace, or peace at the cost of womens rights.

This is a dangerous narrative that feeds into a broader zero-sum view of rights in which womens gains come at the expense of men.

I do not believe gender equality is a zero-sum game, Sopko said in his remarks.

In the Afghan context, the emerging narrative that defending womens rights might derail the peace process is a troubling and false set-up. Such as narrative presupposes that sacrificing womens rights could even buy peace, as if such a thing could be sacrificed like a lamb on the altar.

After more than a month hiatus, negotiators from the Taliban and the Afghan government met again on February 22. The two sides are still working on an agenda for talks, with the Afghan government prioritizing a ceasefire and the Taliban dancing around ideas of political arrangements but mostly waiting for the Biden administration to finish its review of the Trump-era Doha agreement.

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Womens rights are certainly a facet in the negotiations but they are not the only point of tension between the two sides. SIGAR stresses in its conclusion the importance of the U.S. advocating a greater role for women in the negotiations. Amid the extant political uncertainty, the Afghan governments continued dependence on the U.S. gives Washington a degree of leverage it can, and should, use to remind Afghan powerbrokers that the world is watching, and lend support to Afghan leaders and advocates who share U.S. goals.

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What Has the US Learned About Supporting Afghanistan's Women? - The Diplomat