Is Zalmay Khalilzad, Trump’s Envoy To Taliban Talks, Angling To Take Over Afghanistan?
A top Afghan official accused the U.S. envoy to the region of trying to weaken the Afghan government by cutting it out of talks with the Taliban, replace it, and possibly even run for president himself.
“The reason he is delegitimizing the Afghan government and weakening it, and at the same time elevating the Taliban can only have one approach. It’s definitely not for peace,” said former Afghan Ambassador to Washington Hamdullah Mohib, speaking of U.S. reconciliation envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, in an extraordinary breakfast with national security reporters in Washington, D.C. “He is not reconciling, he’s alienating.”
Mohib, who is now Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s national security adviser, said he’d come to Washington specifically to complain that rather than using U.S. influence to force the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan government, Khalilzad had sidelined them, giving the Taliban no reason to talk peace as it prepares “for a full-on spring offensive” against Afghan troops.
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