While much of the world is focused on the indignities being heaped on the United States by Russia, China and Ecuador in the fugitive Edward Snowden affair, the Taliban on Monday demonstrated their own contempt for the Obama administration.

Last week, U.S. officials celebrated what they regarded as a diplomatic breakthrough. They had persuaded the Taliban to open a political office in Doha, Qatar—and now America hopes it has the peace-negotiating partners the Obama administration covets as the U.S. plans its escape from Afghanistan. On Monday, the Taliban attacked the presidential compound in Kabul. The daylight gunbattle left at least eight Taliban and three guards dead.

The Afghan government—and the majority of Afghans—were not happy about the Doha news. The Taliban had immediately begun flying its flag and posting signs declaring the office as an outpost of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. President Karzai announced that he would not join peace negotiations with killers who had been so legitimized by the U.S., and he suspended talks with the U.S. about a long-term security arrangement.

The Taliban didn’t take long to prove his point. Or to expose Washington as a receding and tired presence in Afghanistan, desperate to leave.

But despair and confusion cannot bring enduring peace, or even an honorable exit. Now, with the U.S. endorsement of the Taliban office in Doha, the credibility and authority of the Afghan state has been undermined. The Doha debacle also represents the dismantling of an unwritten compact that Afghans thought they had with America: In return for Washington’s support for Afghanistan’s independence, sovereignty and constitutional order, the U.S. would enjoy all privileges of a strategic partnership in a dangerous part of the world, including cooperation on counterterrorism.

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