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The former US envoy said Biden should pursue “normalcy,” defends the peace deal he negotiated, blames Ghani for the failures.
Former U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said the Biden administration should engage with the Taliban to help alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country.
Khalilzad, who negotiated the US withdrawal with the Taliban ending a 20-year military presence, defended the Taliban agreement and leadership on Wednesday while accusing former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of failed peace talks and the fall of Kabul.
Letting the new Taliban government collapse in Kabul would create a “huge humanitarian crisis” and trigger the migration of millions of Afghans, destabilize the region and “create space for terrorism,” warned the former US ambassador.
The Taliban seek “normal relations” with the United States and want the United States to reopen its embassy in Kabul, lift financial sanctions and provide economic assistance, he said.
“We need to sit down with them to agree on a roadmap that takes into account the issue of mistrust, or mistrust of each other and their behavior (on human rights) that we expect… and in exchange, the specific steps we would take, ”Khalilzad said.
Khalilzad’s remarks came in an interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank focused on geopolitics.
Khalilzad had been Washington’s henchman in negotiating a deal with the Taliban for a US military withdrawal coupled with peace talks with the West-backed government in Kabul. This effort ended with the Taliban forces ignoring ceasefire demands from Western and Afghan governments and invading the Afghan army and police.
The United States and its NATO allies briefly returned thousands of troops to Kabul in August for a chaotic airlift of more than 120,000 of its citizens, residents and Afghans who supported their missions. Thousands more have been left behind and reports of retaliatory killings by the Taliban have since been released.
“The Taliban have changed in some ways and are the same in other ways,” Khalilzad said. “They have respected the agreement banning the plots and planning of terrorist groups against the United States.”
US “skepticism” of the Taliban is justified but should lead to “exploration” of diplomatic opportunities rather than “paralysis”, he said.
Khalilzad blamed the “poor performance” of US-backed Afghan forces and criticized former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for believing he could defeat the Taliban militarily without a US presence and for ignoring demands Taliban for his resignation.
“We were all surprised by President Ghani’s intransigence in insisting on staying in power,” Khalilzad said.
Ghani’s “big miscalculation was that he didn’t think we were serious about the withdrawal, that we would never withdraw,” he said.
Khalilzad has broadly defended the Taliban leadership’s adherence to their agreements with the United States, saying they have fulfilled their commitments not to allow safe haven for groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS (ISIS). Both groups are still present in Afghanistan.
The Taliban refrained from killing US troops after the deal was signed in February 2020 through withdrawal – a key commitment, he said.
Khalilzad resigned his post as the United States Special Representative for Reconciliation in Afghanistan at the State Department on October 15. He had been criticized for the failure of the peace talks and was replaced by his deputy, Assistant Secretary of State Tom West.
Asked by Carnegie interviewer Aaron David Miller if he had done anything wrong that, if corrected, could have changed the outcome of events, Khalilzad said he would “think about it”.
Senior Taliban officials and US officials have held their first face-to-face meetings since the withdrawal of US forces and the Taliban coming to power in Doha earlier this month. Khalilzad was not involved in these talks.
Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting foreign minister of Afghanistan, said the Taliban delegation in Doha was focusing on humanitarian aid and the United States lifting the freeze on the currency reserves of the Afghan central bank. He added that the United States would offer COVID-19 vaccines.
So far, officials in the Biden administration have said the United States will maintain financial and economic sanctions against the Taliban while seeking ways to secure humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.
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