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Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani swore to fight to the death, but fled Kabul when the Taliban arrived, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday.
Also last weekend, the Hudson Institute, a conservative US think tank, regarded the reported US-Pakistan talks on a formal agreement for using Pakistani airspace for Afghan operations as a substantial development.
Former US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad suggested in a recent appearance with CBS’s “Face The Nation” chat show that the Biden administration should have done more to prevent the government in Kabul from collapsing.
The interviewer on Sunday’s episode questioned Secretary Blinken if he had tried to persuade Mr. Ghani to stay in Kabul personally.
Mr Blinken said he spoke with Mr Ghani on Saturday night (Aug 14), pleading with him to accept a plan to hand over control to a new administration in Kabul, which would have been “headed by the Taliban but (would have) encompassed all segments of Afghan society,” he added.
Mr Ghani informed Mr Blinken that he was “willing to do that,” but that if the Taliban refused, he was “willing to fight to the grave.” “He then escaped Afghanistan the next day.” On August 15, while Mr Ghani was leaving Afghanistan, the Taliban captured Kabul.
Mr Blinken continued, “So, I was engaged with President Ghani for many weeks, many months.”
When asked if he did everything he could, the top US ambassador said the State Department was looking into everything the US did beginning in 2020, when the Trump administration reached an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan.
According to him, the assessment would encompass “steps we took during our administration” because “we have to take every possible lesson from the last couple of years” as well as the previous 20 years.
Secretary Blinken noted that this was America’s longest war and that President Biden stopped it to save another generation of Americans from fighting and dying in Afghanistan.
“And I believe that, once all of this is settled, that is genuinely what the American people want and in our best interests,” he continued. “In the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to keep our word.”
Pakistan would “portray the counter-terrorism deal as a symbol of tight US-Pakistan cooperation,” according to the Hudson analysis of a potential US-Pakistan air access pact.
Several US critics have expressed a wish to withdraw with Pakistan, according to a Hudson study published with the review. “It’d be a blunder to do so. As frustrating as Pakistan’s policies have been for the US, the country remains vital to US policy,” the research said.
Pakistan has continued to grant the United States access to its airspace, according to US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, who told Congress earlier this week that the two countries are discussing keeping that access open.
“Pakistan is a difficult actor,” Dr. Kahl told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “but they don’t want Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorist attacks, external assaults, not only against Pakistan but against others.” “They continue to grant us access to Pakistani airspace, and we’re in talks about maintaining that access.”
