FILE PHOTO: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the leader of the Taliban delegation, and Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan, shake hands after signing an agreement at a ceremony between members of Afghanistan's Taliban and the U.S. in Doha, Qatar February 29, 2020. REUTERS/Ibraheem al Omari/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two brutal attacks this week laid bare major weaknesses of the U.S.-Taliban troop withdrawal pact: nothing in it obliges the Taliban to prevent such massacres and the Afghan government's ability to thwart them will only wane as U.S. troops pull out.
The pact is ultimately supposed to promote peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which denied carrying out a Kabul attack in which three gunmen disguised as police killed 24 people, including two babies, at a Kabul maternity ward (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attacks-hospital-insight/maternity-ward-massacre-shakes-afghanistan-and-its-peace-process-idUSKBN22P2F5) and a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan that killed 32.
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