The dramatic but not so unexpected firing of John Bolton, the US National Security Adviser (NSA), through a  tweet by US President Donald Trump, provides valuable insight into how and why the Taliban deal, that was to be signed on Sunday (September 8) in Camp David, was called off at the very last minute – yes, by yet another famous Trump tweet. The dramatic announcement that Taliban leaders would actually travel to Camp David outside of Washington DC was by itself startling, for it was shrouded in secrecy and no one knew what the fine-print of the ‘deal’ was all about. 
 
Was the global war on terror that the US had embarked upon in October 2001 coming to an end finally on the 18th anniversary of 9/11? Was the Taliban willing to lay down the gun and accept the ballot over the bullet? Would the Taliban accept the Afghan constitution and respect the rights of women and allow the education of girls? And above all, would the Taliban give up its aim of reverting to the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan that it had set up in 1996?
 
Clearly there was no clarity, much less consensus, about what the US Special representative on Afghan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been negotiating with the Taliban for months, except perhaps one political bullet dear to Trump – the equivalent of ‘get me a deal  that I can sign just before 9/11 and announce that the boys are coming home.’
 
This was a campaign promise that Trump had made in 2016 and this ostensible victory over the Taliban would have had high value in the re-election campaign for the White House that begins soon. The Trump objective was crystal clear, but one of the wise men on the Trump team had his reservations about the Taliban deal and these, it may be conjectured, were conveyed firmly to the POTUS (President of the US).
 
This push-back resulted in the September 7 tweets by Trump announcing that he had decided to cancel the Taliban deal and there would be no Camp David ceremony. It is understood that the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who was on a special plane with the senior US military commander in Afghanistan, got the news about the cancellation en route to DC and had to return to Afghanistan.
 
While there is no official word yet about why Bolton was fired, most Beltway watchers aver that the Taliban deal was the final straw for the NSA who has had his differences with the POTUS over North Korea, Iran and Russia. Dov Zakheim, former Under-Secretary in the Department of Defence and an astute analyst, noted : “Bolton’s opposition to the invitation to Camp David was the final straw for the president, especially when he had to withdraw that invitation. In doing so, he seemed to vindicate Bolton’s judgment over his own. For Donald Trump, to be wrong about anything is intolerable. Bolton had to go.”
 
Thus, on the  18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attack, it is difficult not to infer that the US policy towards a long drawn-out war in Afghanistan is being driven by the short-term electoral considerations of an unpredictable and mercurial US President, often driven by unethical self-interest, vanity and petulance.
 
While unseemly, the Bolton departure is being seen within the USA as a case of principled opposition to a fickle president who may be mortgaging US security interest by being irrationally obdurate on complex and sensitive policy issues. Globally, barring Pakistan and maybe, China, the scuttling of an opaque deal with the Taliban is being met with a sigh of relief. Delhi has not yet made an official statement, but legitimizing the Taliban at a Camp David ceremony would  have had an adverse impact on India’s strategic interests in the region.
 
The violence continues in Afghanistan. It is a reflection of how cynical the world has become about ‘that war in a distant land’ for even an announcement that the US had killed over 1,000 adversaries (the Taliban) over 10 days received little or no attention in the global media. It was one more statistic in the blood-splattered history of the graveyard of empires.
 
Defending the Trump policy towards Afghanistan during the weekend when  the deal was aborted, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted to CNN : “You should know in the last 10 days we’ve killed over a thousand Taliban,...and  while this is not a war of attrition, I want the American people to know that President Trump is taking it to the Taliban in an effort to make sure that we protect America’s interests.”
 
Predictably, an irate Taliban leadership warned the White House that the impulsive decision to call off the US-Taliban peace  process would “lead to more losses for the United States.” Taliban  spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid warned that the "anti-peace" stance of America will be exposed to the world and “losses to lives and assets will increase.” Tragically, this is a very unhappy  and bleak contour to the 18th anniversary of 9/11 where the innocent Afghan citizen will continue to  pay the heaviest price. 
 
(The writer is Director, Society for Policy Studies)