"This agreement appears to have been timed to enable President [Donald] Trump to claim that he has kept his campaign promise of withdrawal from Afghanistan but it seems certain to fall apart well before the November US elections," Freeman said. "More important, it does nothing to compose a peace inside Afghanistan between the warring factions and contains no pledge of continuing American aid for Afghanistan."
In all likelihood, Freeman added, it is a recipe for an intensified Afghan civil war.
"I doubt it will actually enable a US withdrawal or improve the situation in Afghanistan," Freeman said.
A centrepiece of the agreement is a pledge by the Taliban to prevent foreign terrorist groups like Al Qaeda* and Daesh* from setting up bases in Afghanistan from which to plan and execute attacks in the United States.
In the mid-1990s, al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, moved from Sudan to Afghanistan, which became the base from which the September 11, 2011 attacks on New York and Washington were directed.
Freeman suggested that the US could have avoided the longest war in its history by negotiating a similar agreement in 2001-02 instead of embarking on a lengthy nation building effort that allowed the Taliban to regroup and transform itself into an insurgency against the American-backed government.
*Daesh (also known as IS/ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia.
*al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia.
