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Ghani’s escape derailed last-ditch deal with Taliban, US envoy says

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s willpower to flee the nation ultimate month scuppered a last-minute handle the Taliban designed to take care of Kabul out of the Islamists’ palms and negotiate a political transition, the US diplomat accountable for talks with the Taliban has said.

In his first interview as a result of the US exit from Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2018 to steer talks with the Islamist insurgents, said he had secured a two-week grace interval hours sooner than the autumn of Kabul.

Under the plan, Ghani was to remain in his put up until a settlement on a future authorities was reached in Qatar, even as a result of the Taliban stood at Kabul’s doorways. Nonetheless the protection vacuum left by Ghani’s escape on August 15 prompted the Islamists to march into the Afghan capital that day, Khalilzad said. This in flip precipitated a chaotic evacuation of civilians and troops and efficiently ended the talks in Doha.

“Even on the end, we had an settlement with the Talibs for [them] to not enter Kabul,” Khalilzad suggested the Financial Cases. He had no inkling “the least bit” that Ghani was aspiring to flee, he said.

The US envoy’s suggestions shed some gentle on the collapse of the Afghan authorities in its remaining hours and the dismay all through the US administration when Kabul fell to the Taliban. They echo secretary of state Antony Blinken who suggested US lawmakers this week he had obtained assurances from Ghani on the eve of his escape that the Afghan president was on board with Washington’s plan.

Kabul security forces disbanded on the knowledge of Ghani’s disappearance, Khalilzad said. “There have been questions of regulation and order in Kabul after Ghani fled . . . The Talibs [then] . . . say: ‘Are you going to take obligation for security of Kabul now? . . . After which you perceive what occurred, we weren’t going to take obligation,” he said, together with he attended a pre-arranged meeting that day with US regional navy commander Primary Frank McKenzie and senior Taliban leaders in Doha.

Khalilzad rejected claims of a tacit or particular affiliation allowing the Islamists into the presidential palace on August 15. “We didn’t give them any kind of inexperienced gentle or one thing of that kind. What we said is what the mission of the US forces was,” he said, referring to the airport evacuation.

Taliban Fateh fighters, a ‘explicit forces’ unit, stand guard alongside a street in Kabul on August 29 2021, amid suicide bomb threats all through the remaining part of the US navy’s airlift operation from Kabul © Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Footage

The US envoy to Afghanistan first talked about the standstill handle the Kabul authorities on August 12 and reached an accord with the Islamists two days later to safeguard city’s integrity, in response to US officers. Ghani, nonetheless, was not liable to be part of any future authorities because of his resignation was a precondition set by the Taliban. By August 13, the Islamists have been encircling Kabul after seizing control of plenty of the nation.

Ghani couldn’t be reached for comment. In a video posted on Fb from the United Arab Emirates on Aug 18, Ghani said he fled because of his life was in danger and to “forestall bloodshed” in Kabul as a result of the Taliban descended on the capital. He said he left with one change of clothes and described allegations that he absconded with looted cash as “baseless lies”. On Twitter ultimate week he said his palace security had urged him that “to remain risked setting off the an identical horrific street-to-street combating city had suffered all through the civil battle of the Nineteen Nineties”.

Khalilzad, a 70-year-old Republican, has come beneath fireside for his coping with of the Taliban beforehand three years and the deal he brokered in 2020 beneath Trump setting the phrases of the US withdrawal. Critics say this accord squandered Washington’s leverage in negotiations, undercut the elected authorities in Kabul and helped legitimise the Islamist insurgency.

US president Joe Biden criticised the 2020 pact nevertheless retained the Afghan-born diplomat as prime US envoy to Afghanistan — a alternative that Khalilzad said shocked him “at one diploma”. In a reflection of Kabul’s resentment on the deal he negotiated and expectations Biden would appoint one other particular person, Ghani at one stage refused to meet him.

“I was prepared, clearly, to go away,” said Khalilzad.

A former US ambassador to Afghanistan who has labored on the realm for 4 a few years, he blamed these sooner than him for the constraints of his 2020 deal. He really helpful successive US administrations had progressively lowered their requires as a result of the Taliban made navy options. His 2018 appointment “was the outcomes of what had not gone correct,” he said.

Abdul Ghani Baradar, correct, chief of the Taliban delegation, indicators an settlement with Zalmay Khalilzad, in Doha, Qatar on February 29 2020 © Ibraheem al Omari/Reuters

“[People] are looking for a scapegoat of some kind,” he added. “I’m sure I’ll have executed larger — of us would depend on me to say that. Nonetheless as soon as I replicate I did my very best that I’ll, given the taking part in playing cards I was dealt with inside the circumstances, the fundamentals.”

Requested whether or not or not he thought-about resigning, he said he on a regular basis had a letter ready that he saved at residence “because of proper right here [in state department] any particular person may take it”.

Throughout the hour-long interview, Khalilzad moreover denied claims from the CIA’s former regional counter-terrorism chief that he was “dabbling” and had overpromised in an effort to vary into Trump’s secretary of state as “complete nonsense”.

The obligation for the messy ending of America’s longest battle lay largely with the Afghans, he said. “[T]he indisputable fact that they didn’t [negotiate peace] or one facet disintegrated, that’s not the obligation of the USA. It’s not my obligation.”

Khalilzad said he nonetheless mourned the failure to ship a political settlement with the Taliban years earlier. “There could be a great deal of soul looking,” he said.

Additional reporting by Amy Kazmin in Delhi

https://www.ft.com/content material materials/ee113fde-bfc5-417d-b123-2abcf639f95e | Ghani’s escape derailed last-ditch handle Taliban, US envoy says

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