Khalilzad urges US engage with Taliban to avert Afghan collapse

The former United States special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said the Biden administration should engage with the Taliban to help ease the philanthropic extremity unfolding in the country now.

Khalilzad, who negotiated the US pullout with the Taliban ending a 20- time military presence, on Wednesday defended the agreement and Taliban leadership while condemning former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for the failure of peace addresses and the fall of Kabul.

Allowing the new Taliban government in Kabul to fall piecemeal would produce a “ huge philanthropic extremity” and detector migration of millions of Afghans, destabilise the region and “ produce space for terrorism”, the former US minister advised.

The Taliban are seeking “ normal relations” with the US and want the US to renew its delegacy in Kabul, lift fiscal warrants and give profitable backing, he said.

We need to sit with them to agree to a roadmap that takes into account the issue of mistrust, or distrust of each other and their geste (on mortal rights) that we anticipate to take place … and in exchange for that, the specific way that we’d take,” Khalilzad said.

Khalilzad’s reflections came in an inte

rview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington- grounded think-tank concentrated on geopolitics.

Khalilzad had been Washington’s point- man in negotiating a deal with the Taliban for a US military pullout coupled with peace addresses with the Western- backed government in Kabul. That trouble ended with Taliban forces ignoring Western and Afghan government demands for ceasefire and overran the Afghan army and police.

The US and its NATO abettors transferred thousands of colors back to Kabul compactly in August for a chaotic airlift of further than of their citizens, residers and Afghans who supported their operations. Numerous thousands more were left before, and reports of reprisal killings by the Taliban have since surfaced.

The Taliban have changed in some ways and are the same in other ways,” Khalilzad said. “ They did stick to the agreement not to allow conniving and planning by terrorist groups against the United States.”

US “ scepticism” of the Taliban is justified but should lead to “ disquisition” of openings for tactfulness rather than “ palsy”, he said.

Khalilzad criticized “ poor performance” by US- backed Afghan forces and blamed former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for believing he could master the Taliban militarily without a US presence and failing to heed Taliban demands for his abdication.

We were each surprised by the mulishness of President Ghani in averring to stay in power,” Khalilzad said.

Ghani’s “ grand misapprehension was he did n’t suppose we were serious about pullout, that we’d noway withdraw,” he said.

Khalilzad largely defended the Taliban leadership’s adherence to its agreements with the US, saying it had fulfilled commitments not to allow safe harbour for groups like al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS). The two groups are still present in Afghanistan.

The Taliban abstain from killing American colors after the deal was inked in February 2020 through the pullout – a crucial commitment, he said.

Khalilzad abnegated his Department of State post as US special representative for Afghanistan conciliation on October 15. He’d come under review for the failure of peace addresses and was replaced by his deputy, Assistant Secretary of State Tom West.

Asked by Carnegie canvasser Aaron David Miller if he’d done anything wrong that, if corrected, could have changed the outgrowth of events, Khalilzad said he “ would reflect on that”.

Elderly Taliban officers and US representatives held their first in-person meetings since the US forces pullout and the Taliban’s rise to power in Doha before this month. Khalilzad wasn’t involved in those addresses.

Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister, said the focus of the Taliban delegation in Doha was on philanthropic aid and getting the US to lift its snap on Afghanistan’s central bank financial reserves. He added that the US would offer vaccines against COVID-19.

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