A Taliban peace deal at what cost?

Afghan schoolgirls attending class in a tent in Kandahar in 2014. The literacy rate in Afghanistan is about 30%, and about 42% of the country’s population is under the age of 14. According to Unicef more boys than girls attend classes in primary school in Afghanistan. — AFP

OVER the last year, Afghans watched as the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban while excluding the Afghan government, the people, civil society and, in particular, Afghan women.

The sequencing and opaqueness of this process raised alarm bells from the start, but many in the international community trusted that any deal the United States signed with the Taliban would not reignite another cycle of violence or a return to the severe human rights abuses and oppression of women that previously occurred under Taliban rule.