ASSESSMENTS

Afghanistan Prepares for a Financial Future Without the U.S.

Dec 11, 2019 | 10:30 GMT

Afghan laborers work on the exterior renovation of Darulaman Palace in Kabul on Aug. 8, 2019. As the United States looks to slowly stop funding Kabul, Afghanistan's leaders will need to find a way of raising more of their own funds.

(WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Highlights

A U.S.-Taliban peace deal will pave the way for intra-Afghan negotiations aimed at ending the country's conflict.
Kabul's lack of domestic revenues will require Washington to continue funding security and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan well beyond 2020.
Accordingly, the United States wishes to end the conflict to grow Afghanistan's $20 billion economy so the country can generate more domestic revenues and gradually wean itself off international funding.

A year ahead of the U.S. 2020 presidential election, Washington appears to have revived its latest attempt at a peace deal with the Taliban. On Nov. 28, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where he met his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, and addressed some of the roughly 12,000 U.S. troops serving in the country, just as American diplomats were busy meeting with Taliban officials in Qatar in a bid to rekindle formal negotiations that the president himself halted in September. On Dec. 7, U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad did, indeed, revive dialogue with the Taliban. With talks restarting, the two sides will once more seek a deal entailing a partial U.S. drawdown while opening the way for talks between the Taliban and Kabul in support of a political settlement. But regardless of when a U.S.-Taliban deal gets done, the United States will still be footing the bill for...

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