Diplomacy of Disaster: The Afghanistan ‘Peace Process’ and the Taliban Occupation of Kabul

Summary On 29 February 2020 in Doha, the United States signed an ‘Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan’ with extremist Taliban movement. Yet on 15 August 2021, seized control of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. This article argues that Doha Agreement did not simply precede takeover; significant ways it contributed it. In its negotiation, content and implementation, created destructive incentives domestic international parties, had effects mass psychology Afghanistan creators seemed have anticipated or understood. sense, serves as a cautionary tale about danger assuming negotiated ‘diplomatic solutions’ are necessarily superior messy alternatives. The closest 20th-century equivalent was Munich September 1938.