Afghanistan Peace CampaignKhalilzad said to members of congress that if the Doha agreement with “the Taliban” was not reached, the US would have had to enter the war again.
The United States Congress summoned Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US special representative for the reconciliation of Afghanistan, to speak on Thursday about the details of the Doha agreement.
Khalilzad said to members of congress that if the Doha agreement with “the Taliban” was not reached, the US would have had to enter the war again.
Speaking the hearing of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, he said that the efforts for Afghanistan are not over yet and the last chapter of this country has not been written.
Khalilzad said: “A last-minute success in persuading the Taliban to refrain from entering Kabul and instead to hold talks with the government to reach a political deal for a transition government – a step to which both sides had agreed – fell apart when President Ghani surprisingly fled the country, which caused the now leaderless Afghan military and police to instantly disintegrate. These developments led to the Taliban entry into Kabul. This abrupt sequence of events obliged the US to react, adapt and improvise, as none of this had been foreseen in our plans to withdraw by the end of August.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, in response to a question from a member of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs about banning women’s education and work, claimed that the Islamic Emirate has acted against its commitments after regaining control in Afghanistan.
Khalilzad said: “They did nothing in the agreement — the issues dealing with the future of Afghanistan was to be negotiated among the Afghans between the two sides.”
Michael McCaul, the chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, at this hearing called the departure of Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan, “cowardly.”