U.S., Taliban sign peace deal

America’s longest war appears to be coming to an end. The United States on Saturday signed a peace agreement with the Taliban to end the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan that began after 9/11. As part of the deal, the United States plans to withdraw all 13,000 of its troops in the next 14 months. Peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are set to begin by March 10, where they plan to negotiate a permanent cease-fire.

What does the United States get out of the deal? The Taliban promises to renounce al-Qaida and prevent it or other terror groups from using Afghanistan to plan attacks on the United States or its allies. The U.S. troop withdrawal is contingent on those pledges. “We will closely watch the Taliban’s compliance with their commitments, and calibrate the pace of our withdrawal to their actions,” said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who witnessed the agreement’s signing in Qatar. “This is how we will ensure that Afghanistan never again serves as a base for international terrorists.”

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Mindy Belz’s “Answering jihad,” written just before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.