The US chose peace negotiations as an alternative because it was losing the war to the Taliban, the former US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad has said in an interview for CBS News on Sunday.
Khalilzad said that after failing many times to strengthen its position on the battleground, US military has opted on negotiation based on the judgment that the United States weren’t winning the war and it was better to make a deal sooner than later.
According to the former US special representative, the former Afghani president Ashraf Ghani is the one to blame for the disintegration of Afghanistan’s security sector since his escape triggered the chaos in the Afghan capital.
Pointing that the US wanted a different outcome for the Afghan peace talks, he added that Ghani’s escape also resulted in failing of the discussions he had with the Taliban about forming a power-sharing government that would’ve also include some officials of the Ghani administration.
Khalilzad discredited the former Afghani president’s remarks about fleeing Kabul to avoid bloodshed, stressing that Ghani did not want to let go of power for the sake of peace.
He noted that though the US justified the reason it went to Afghanistan for by largely succeeding in suppressing Al Qaeda, it has failed to build a democratic Afghanistan but has transformed the country enough to give the Taliban hard time in putting Afghans back in the box like in the 1990s
The former US special representative is adamant that the relationship between Afghanistan and the US will not become normal if the Islamic Emirate does not form an inclusive government and does not respect the rights of Afghans, earning also of a possible civil war if the Afghan economy collapses.
He also believes that the US should help Afghanistan to end troubles in the country by pushing towards an agreement that is acceptable by urban and rural Afghans and by secular and religious Afghans.
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