Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told lawmakers Wednesday that the Taliban were not honoring their part of a deal inked Feb. 29 with the U.S. following a recent spate of violence across Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The agreement between the Taliban and the U.S., just four days old, is already under pressure as American warplanes swept into Helmand<\/a> Wednesday to bail out Afghan security forces three days after the insurgent group announced the resumption of attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Esper said that the Taliban were honoring the agreement in terms of \u201cnot attacking U.S. and coalition forces, but not in terms of sustaining a reduction of violence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the American airstrike, Taliban spokesman Muhammad Suhail Shaheen responded that the Taliban will \u201cimplement all parts of the agreement\u201d to de-escalate the war, but he called on other parties in the conflict to \u201cremove the barriers\u201d for implementing the agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. attempted to end its 18-year long war in Afghanistan in a four-page deal with the Taliban that includes language as ambiguous as America\u2019s reasons for slogging through gunfights across Helmand\u2019s sparsely populated rural farmlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Confusion surrounding the peace agreement appears to center on a Taliban commitment to reduce violence across the country, but no terms related to violence reduction or a cessation of hostilities can be found in the text of the four-page deal<\/a> inked in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One vaguely-crafted line in the agreement may hint at violence or attack reduction against coalition and partner forces: The \u201cTaliban will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that line may also be a reference to America\u2019s desire that the Taliban continue to fight ISIS and sever connections to al-Qaida.<\/p>\n\n\n\t