Peace deal? What peace deal?

By the end of this month it will be 17 months since the Taliban team of negotiators and American officials led by Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador in Kabul, signed a piece of paper in Qatar which supposedly outlined the process and timetable for an end to America's war in Afghanistan and a move by the insurgents to start talking seriously about peace and power-sharing with the Afghan government. It all seems to have gone down hill ever since. Sure, the US has kept to its side of the bargain, albeit agreeing to pull out all troops by September 11 (now August 31) instead of Donald Trump's May 31 as per the Qatar deal. But the only concession the Taliban have made is to ignore the American troops as they withdrew and just got on with seizing as much of the country as possible. The Pentagon continued to mount aggressive defensive measures, including having two carrier strike forces in the Arabian Sea, to ensure that the Taliban were deterred from attacking the US troops as they queued up to leave for home. But if the Taliban HAD targeted the withdrawing Americans, it would have invited a massive retaliation. The Taliban knew that and anyway they had promised to stop attacking American troops as part of the Qatar deal. They kept that promise but it was an easy one to honour because, in their view, provided the pull-out timetable was followed, give or take a few weeks, they could concentrate all their efforts on seizing districts across the country. Now, according to Reuters, they are hunting down Afghan military pilots to disrupt the fledgling air force which had been developed and nurtured and equipped by the Americans. The Afghan air force poses a real threat to the Taliban because their pilots can bomb away without too much problem. But even if the Taliban fail in their attempts to target Afghan pilots - and please God they do - the air force itself is soon going to be in trouble, because the hundreds of private contractors employed to maintain the aircraft are also being withdrawn under the same Qatar deal. No mechanics, no aircraft. Will there ever be any good news coming out of Afghanistan?