After a controversial stint, Zalmay Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation who brokered the peace deal between the United States and the Taliban, has stepped down and replaced by veteran American diplomat Thomas West.
Khalilzad sent in his resignation on Monday. The Joe Biden administration is expected to formally announce Zalmay Khalilzad’s resignation.
In his resignation to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Khalilzad said the tasks given to him are over. “War between the US and Afghanistan is over and we are free from financial burden also,” the resignation reads.
Blinken later confirmed the move. “As Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad steps down from his role. I extend my gratitude for his decades of service to the American people,” he said.
Blinken said that Thomas West is taking over to “lead diplomatic efforts, advise the Secretary…and coordinate closely with the U.S. Embassy Kabul presence in Doha.”
West, who earlier served on the Vice President’s national security team and the National Security Council staff, will lead diplomatic efforts, advise the Secretary and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and coordinate closely with the US.
In his resignation letter, according to Politico, Khalilzad said, “The political arrangement between the Afghan government and the Taliban did not go forward as envisaged. The reasons for this are too complex and I will share my thoughts in the coming days and weeks.” “Going forward, I plan to contribute to the discussion and debate about not only what happened but what should be done next,” he said, according to Politico.
According to a report in AFP, Khalilzad took control of the US-Afghan portfolio in 2018 after the Trump administration named him a special envoy overseeing negotiations with the Taliban.
The US decision to pursue talks followed years of rising violence in Kabul where the Taliban unleashed chaos by sending waves of suicide bombers into the Afghan capital.
Khalilzad secured the release of the Taliban’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar from Pakistan’s custody to kickstart the initiative, with the two sides cobbling together an agreement charting the US withdrawal after nearly two decades of conflict.
Khalilzad reportedly developed a close rapport with the Taliban delegation thanks to months of negotiations in Qatar.
But he had secured mostly just assurances from the Taliban about ensuring peace in future – even as late as in February 2020 when the US withdrawal deal was signed in Doha. Taliban’s assurances to abandon Al-Qaeda and other international jihadist groups were also ambiguous.
Rather than securing compromises from the Taliban in the months following the deal, Khalilzad piled more pressure on the Afghan government — strong-arming the palace into releasing thousands of insurgent prisoners who immediately bolstered the militant ranks, the an AFP report said.
The agreement set off a countdown, with the US deciding to pull all of its troops from Afghanistan by May 2021. The deadline was later extended until September.
The US decision sparked a sudden, all-out offensive by the Taliban that eventually overthrew the Afghanistan government by force on August 15.
Two days earlier, US lawmaker Michael Waltz sent a letter to Biden pillorying Khalilzad’s performance.
In the letter, Waltz said that Khalilzad “has provided you with poor counsel and his diplomatic strategy has failed spectacularly”, he wrote.
“In light of this catastrophe, Ambassador (Khalilzad) should resign immediately or be relieved from his position,” he wrote.
Khalilzad sent out his last tweet the same day, urging the Taliban to pull back its men. “We demand an immediate end to attacks against cities, urge a political settlement, and warn that a government imposed by force will be a pariah state,” he wrote. But Taliban had seized control of the war-torn country by then.
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