Post U.S. Afghanistan: An Assessment of How the Withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition Forces from Afghanistan will Impact the U.S. - Taliban Agreement with Supporting Historical Analysis Comparing the Decade after Soviet Withdrawal to Current Conditions in Afghanistan

On February 29th, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement to withdraw all U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan within fourteen months of the announcement of the agreement. In exchange the Taliban will: take certain steps to ensure Afghanistan will not be “used by any group[s] or individual[s]” to “threaten the security of the United States and its allies”; the Taliban will engage in intra-Afghan negotiations with the purpose of establishing a political power sharing settlement involving the Taliban for a post U.S. Afghanistan; and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be on the agenda of the intra-Afghan negotiations (Agreement for Bringing Peace, 2020). This thesis seeks to answer how will the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan impact the tenets of the U.S. – Taliban agreement. The assessment will be divided by the three core tenets of the U.S. – Taliban agreement: a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, intra-Afghan negotiations to establish a political power sharing settlement involving the Taliban for a post U.S. Afghanistan, and counterterrorism guarantees by the Taliban (Agreement for Bringing Peace, 2020). Each tenet will have its own assessment that reflects how that section of the agreement will function in a post U.S. and coalition force Afghanistan. The conclusion of each tenet’s assessment will be further supported by historical analysis that compares the operating environment after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan with the current operating environment in Afghanistan to ascertain how the departure of Western forces from Afghanistan will impact the U.S. – Taliban agreement. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, in 1989, resulted in the tumultuous decade of the 1990s: mujahadeen resistance against the communist government in Afghanistan, the collapse of the Communist government, the Afghan civil war, and Taliban support of al-Qaeda culminating in the attacks of September 11th, 2001 (Coll, 2004). Examining the aftereffects of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as compared to current conditions in Afghanistan is critical in order to determine if the departure of U.S. and coalition forces will have similar effects to the Soviet withdrawal