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February 17, 2020 The Taliban have announced they have finalized an agreement with the United States, after more than a year of negotiations, to pave the way for the end of two decades of war in Afghanistan. The document will be signed in Doha, Qatar by the end of the month. The agreement, the Taliban assured, will allow direct negotiations between the Afghans, an opportunity hitherto denied by the rebels, to begin and provides for the progressive withdrawal of US troops from the country and the release of almost half of the militiamen detained by Afghan forces.

First the truce and then the withdrawal
After two years of announcements and denials, the agreement between the United States and the Taliban finally arrives. As a first effect, a truce will start which should lead to the withdrawal of the last US military and other NATO-supplied contingents from Afghanistan. According to a source close to the Trump administration, the "reduction of violence" will start shortly, for a period of seven days, which will then have to allow for real peace negotiations between all parties.

Hallway with honor
The ratification of the agreement could finally give the right foothold to the US and NATO to justify the withdrawal of a good part of the approximately 20,000 allied soldiers (14,000 US) still present in Afghanistan. According to "Defense Analysis", the 8,700 soldiers are added to the approximately 13 thousand American soldiers (8 thousand assigned to the NATO "Resolute Support" operation to support and train the Afghan forces and another 5 thousand to the "American" "Freedom Sentinel" combat operation) provided by the European states of NATO and by other allies including 1,300 Germans, 1,100 British, 900 Italians, as many Georgians, 800 Romanians, 600 Turks, 350 Poles, 300 Australians, as many Czechs, 230 Mongols, 200 Portuguese while Holland, Denmark and Bulgaria each deploy about 160 military personnel, 130 Albania, 120 Azerbaijan, Croatia and Armenia while twenty other national contingents have purely symbolic stocks of less than 100 effective.

20 years of war
According to Brown University data, the conflict has so far resulted in 157,000 deaths, of which 43,000 are Afghan civilians and 3,302 casualties of Allied forces, including 2,448 Americans and 54 Italians. In early 2019, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had revealed that 45,000 members of his armed forces had been killed in the past five years.