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Biden ‘ignored advice’ on US troops withdrawal from Afghanistan: Khalilzad
US President Joe Biden ignored the counsel of senior US diplomats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who urged him not to pull US troops out of Afghanistan without certain conditions in place, former Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in a transcribed interview released Wednesday.
Khalilzad — who helped negotiate the Doha agreement that led to the complete withdrawal of troops – testified that Biden could have stopped or altered the plan to remove all US forces from Afghanistan by September 2021.
“The State Department — or the secretary and myself, we wanted a conditional withdrawal approach,” he said. “But the ultimate decision was, as we all know, that it was to withdraw based on a timetable.”
Khalilzad said he recommended that the Islamic Emirate and the Afghanistan government at the time reach a separate peace agreement before US troops left the country.
“Secretary Blinken and I, I believe, did recommend that conditionality. That’s my judgment, that conditionality would be the prudent thing to do,” Kalilzad told the committee in his Nov. 8 interview. “But then the response was, ‘Can you get the other side – the Talibs (Islamic Emirate) – not to go back to fighting?”
In his testimony, Khalilzad said such an agreement could have been based on an early 2021 peace negotiation that Khalilzad said visualized a “peace government,” which would have given the Islamic Emirate an equal share of power over Kabul with the then Western-backed Afghan government.
“It was essentially kind of a power-sharing formula that our experts had put together in consultation with outside experts in which the government consists of individuals with ties to both – from the Afghan Government and the Taliban – and be led by somebody acceptable to both sides,” he told the committee.
He said that when reaching such a conditional agreement appeared unlikely, Biden instead decided to move forward with the pullout to avoid IEA attacks on US forces.
Khalilzad said the sudden lack of US support helped enable the Islamic Emirate to retake power, 15 days before the last American service member left the capital.
Khalilzad also told lawmakers that State Department officials had predicted the power-sharing initiative would not have lasted longer than three years without a continued US presence in the country.
He also said at points throughout negotiations with the Islamic Emirate, there were times he believed that the IEA “negotiated merely as a stall tactic to wait out the U.S. until its military forces withdrew to zero.”
Khalilzad believed Biden’s announcement in April 2021 to withdraw all U.S troops negatively affected the morale of the Afghan government forces. He explained that: “The U.S. withdrawal had a psychological impact and negatively affected the relative balance of power for the government. That’s obvious.”
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Islamic Emirate’s army now self-sufficient, says chief of army staff
Mohammad Fasihuddin Fitrat, Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, says that over the past four years, the army forces of the Islamic Emirate have shown no hesitation in defending and protecting Afghanistan, and that today the country’s army is standing on its own feet.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Defense, Fitrat made these remarks at a meeting with media representatives, political analysts, and a number of government officials aimed at coordination and strengthening cooperation. He added: “Nations that cannot stand on their own feet and rely on others, even if they grow, will not be capable of achieving real progress.”
Fitrat also expressed appreciation for the role of the media in ensuring security and in supporting the country’s defense forces, stating: “We and you, as citizens of this land, must put our hands together and build the country together, take pride in our forces, and strive with all our strength for the country’s development. We have created an army that defends honor, territorial integrity, and the borders of the country, and serves as the guardian of our freedom.”
He emphasized that the Islamic Emirate is working to establish an army equipped with modern weapons so that it can defend the country’s territory under all circumstances.
He stated that the country’s army has proven to the people that anyone who looks at this land with ill intent will face a firm and courageous response, and that it has also been made clear to neighboring countries that any aggression against Afghanistan will be met with a response several times stronger.
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Afghan health minister attends second WHO summit in India
Noor Jalal Jalali, the Minister of Public Health of the Islamic Emirate, participated in the second World Health Organization meeting on traditional medicine during his official visit to India.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Ministry of Public Health said that the meeting was held in India with the participation of representatives from around 100 countries, health ministers from 23 countries, professional experts from various nations, and officials from different departments of the World Health Organization.
During the meeting, discussions were held on the standardization of traditional medicine, training of individuals active in this field, recognition of traditional medicine as an established reality, and the sharing of countries’ experiences in this area.
The ministry stated that the purpose of participating in the conference was to standardize traditional medicine in Afghanistan, adding that for several decades this sector has been practiced in a non-standard manner and without a defined curriculum or clear principles.
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Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan boost trade and digital finance ties
Minister Sydykov, in turn, pledged the continuation of Kyrgyzstan’s humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and highlighted his country’s interest in working together on e-governance initiatives.
Afghanistan’s Deputy Prime Minister for Administrative Affairs, Abdul Salam Hanafi, has met with a high-level Kyrgyz delegation led by Minister of Economy and Commerce Bakhyt Sydykov to discuss expanding bilateral trade and strengthening cooperation in digital financial services.
During the meeting, Hanafi reaffirmed Afghanistan’s readiness to deepen ties with Kyrgyzstan, stressing the importance of developing electronic administration systems and modern banking channels to facilitate trade and financial transactions between the two countries.
Minister Sydykov, in turn, pledged the continuation of Kyrgyzstan’s humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and highlighted his country’s interest in working together on e-governance initiatives. He also pointed to potential cooperation in areas such as the printing of securities and the development of electronic payment systems.
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