The U.S.-Taliban peace deal has a secret annex, and lawmakers are not impressed

The U.S. has started withdrawing an initial 4,400 troops from Afghanistan in accord with a deal the Trump administration signed with the Taliban on Feb. 29, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree early Wednesday pledging to release 1,500 Taliban prisoners — short of the 5,000 the U.S. unilaterally committed Afghanistan to — as a goodwill gesture to start peace talks between the Taliban and fractured Afghan government. The U.S. military is even providing the Taliban with "very limited support" in its military campaign against the Islamic State, U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Frank McKenzie told the House on Tuesday.

The Taliban, meanwhile, is still attacking Afghan forces, and what constitutes "peace" in the U.S.-Taliban deal is spelled out in two secret annexes that members of Congress were first able to read over the weekend in a classified room. "The Taliban have read the annexes," The New York Times reported Sunday. "Nonetheless, the Trump administration insists that the secret documents must remain secret, though officials have struggled to explain why to skeptical lawmakers" who "express frustration with the lack of a mechanism for verifying compliance that they believe Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had promised."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, Central Asia, and counterterrorism, said that after a classified briefing, he's increasingly concerned "Trump got fleeced" by the Taliban. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has also sharply critical of the deal and its secret annexes, and Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a former top State Department official, laid his concerns in a Washington Post op-ed.

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"In principle, there is nothing wrong with the United States negotiating directly with the Taliban," Malinowski wrote, but "this is not a peace agreement. It is a fig leaf for withdrawal and for abandoning our Afghan allies," a "fairy tale about peace so that we feel less guilty about leaving, or so Trump can brag that he made a deal."