US, Taliban set peace signing for America’s longest war
Published:Friday | February 28, 2020 | 4:59 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s longest war may finally be nearing an end.
The United States and the Islamists it toppled from power in Afghanistan are poised to sign a peace deal Saturday after a conflict that outlasted two US commanders in chief and is now led by a third eager to fulfil a campaign promise to extricate America from “endless wars.”
More than 18 years since President George W. Bush ordered bombing in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agreement will set the stage for the withdrawal of US troops, some of whom were not yet born when the World Trade Center collapsed on that crisp, sunny morning that changed how Americans see the world.
Saturday’s ceremony also signals the potential end of a tremendous investment of blood and treasure.
The US spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted.
Yet it’s also a conflict that is frequently ignored by US politicians and the American public.
In the Qatari capital of Doha, America’s top diplomat will stand with leaders of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers who harboured Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network as they plotted, and then celebrated, the hijackings of four airliners that were crashed into lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.
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