Tania Wafa
The Doha Agreement was supposed to be a treaty. The trilateral deal with Pakistan and the UAE was meant to be a safeguard.
Instead, they have become mere entries in a growing ledger of broken promises from the Afghan Taliban regime. We are now facing a hard truth: the Taliban have proven to be deceitful, consistently saying what the international community wants to hear while systematically doing the opposite. They have obtained various concessions and financial benefits from other countries but have failed to meet their side of the bargain at every turn. This isn’t just diplomatic friction; it’s a deliberate and dangerous strategy that is fueling regional instability and global terror and it is now starting to boomerang on them internally.
Let’s be clear about the scale of this betrayal. The first part of the Doha Agreement obliged the Taliban to pursue peace through intra-Afghan dialogue. What did we get instead? An intensified military insurgency that marched on Kabul. The promise of an inclusive government dissolved into an exclusionary regime that bans female education and is composed almost entirely of Pashtun ex-militant commanders, shutting out Afghanistan’s rich tapestry of other ethnic groups. This is Taliban 2.0 in name only, following the same old exclusionary and obscurantist policies. Crucially, this oppressive governance is breeding its own consequences. Rising resistance and internal rifts are now weakening the Taliban regime from within. The National Resistance Front (NRF), emboldened by a population fed up with Taliban rule, is intensifying its operations. The recent attack on a Taliban checkpoint near Herat, which killed two militants without any NRF losses, is a clear signal that their illegitimate control is being challenged violently. When figures like the “Lion of Herat,” Ismail Khan, rejoin the fray, it points to a deepening instability that the regime cannot simply wish away.
But the most critical failure lies in their pledge to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a terrorist base. This was the core of the Doha Agreement, and the evidence of its violation is overwhelming. The killing of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in central Kabul wasn’t a lucky strike; it was a stark revelation that top-tier terrorists were not just present, but living under the regime’s protection. This was confirmed by a cascade of authoritative reports. The 35th UN Monitoring Team Report highlighted Saif al-Adl’s strategy to reorganize Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The 36th UN Report outlined the Taliban regime’s direct support to TTP, detailing how their intelligence agency provided guest houses, movement passes, and immunity from arrest. SIGAR reports estimate 6,000-6,500 TTP fighters are now sheltered in Afghanistan. The Taliban aren’t just turning a blind eye; they are active facilitators.
This state-sponsored support has direct and bloody consequences for its neighbors. Look at the trilateral agreement with Pakistan and the UAE. The Taliban took the money, promised to relocate TTP terrorists, and then performed a hollow gesture, moving a few hundred without any mechanism for monitoring. The result has been a surge of terror attacks in Pakistan. The fact that Pakistani security forces have killed hundreds of Afghan nationals in counter-terror operations, and that the Taliban later requested the retrieval of their bodies, is an unprecedented admission of their complicity.
And what has been the world’s response to this brazen deceit? Astonishingly, it has been more talk and more money. The regime receives millions per month, while Pakistan alone has conducted an exhaustive diplomatic campaign, hundreds of meetings, protests, and demarches all demonstrating sustained goodwill met with bad faith. The funding has made no positive change on their behaviour. Instead, there are alarming indications that aid money is being routed to the very terrorists the Taliban promised to combat.
The pattern is now undeniable on all fronts. Externally, promises are merely transactional tools for this regime. Internally, their oppressive rule is sparking an armed resistance that has already killed dozens of their fighters. The Taliban are simultaneously a source of regional terrorism and a target of domestic insurgency. The international community must finally hold the Taliban accountable to their commitments. The era of giving concessions is over. If they continue to provide safe havens to global terrorists while losing control of their own territory to resistance groups, then punitive measures must be applied. Continuing to fund this volatile regime isn’t diplomacy; it’s funding a sinking ship that is determined to take regional security down with it.
—The writer is a freelance columnist {[email protected]}
