Brutal Afghan attacks highlight limitations of US-Taliban deal

Two brutal attacks this week laid bare major weaknesses of the US-Taliban troop withdrawal pact: nothing in it obliges the Taliban to prevent such massacres and the Afghan government’s ability to thwart them will only wane as US troops pull out. The pact is ultimately supposed to promote peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which denied carrying out a Kabul attack in which three gunmen disguised as police killed 24 people, including two babies, at a Kabul maternity ward here and a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan that killed 32. The key provisions of the Feb. 29 agreement - to which the Afghan government was not a party - involved a US commitment to reduce its military...