Former US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has said that it would have been better to get the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) involved in negotiations or deliberations about the future early on.

Speaking in a podcast released by Doha Debates, Khalilzad said that senior IEA members had met chairman of the interim authority in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, following the Bonn negotiations, saying they would accept the new authority, provided that they could live in honor and dignity in their homes and not to be pursued and prosecuted.

He noted that the anger and feelings of the US leadership at that time would have made it difficult to reconcile with the IEA, but the IEA members, in conversations in Doha, blamed Karzai and the Northern Alliance figures.

“They (IEA) thought that 20 years of war and all the loss of life on all sides of Afghanistan was due to that mistake, as they saw it, to that neglect by President Karzai,” he said.

The former US diplomat recalled that President Donald Trump decided in 2018 to get troops out of Afghanistan believing the US wouldn’t succeed in winning the war and that priorities had changed.

Khalilzad said that he kept insisting in talks with the IEA that nothing would be agreed to until everything is agreed to, but there was this messaging from Washington and a desire not to link, too tightly, withdrawal to the agreement between the government and the IEA because of an assumption that the “Afghans would not agree with each other.”

On the two secret annexes of the Doha Agreement, Khalilzad said that they were about the specifics of the withdrawal process and terrorism issues, not the future Afghan government.

He emphasized that the Doha agreement meets the core concerns of the United States as not as single American was killed by the IEA during the 18 months and IEA is living up to its commitments regarding terrorism.

Four Afghans are among those who were killed in Friday’s attack on coal miners in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, Kabul confirmed.

A total of 20 miners were killed in the attack by unidentified gunmen in Duki district of Balochistan province.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) in a statement strongly condemned the attack and called on the government of Pakistan to take “necessary actions” to prevent such “unfortunate incidents” in the future.

It added that the Consulate General of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) in Quetta had been directed to provide necessary assistance to ensure the repatriation of the Afghan victims’ bodies to Afghanistan.

Officials from the Union of Crude Oil Refining Factories say Afghanistan has reached self-sufficiency in producing diesel fuel by 80 percent.

The union officials stated that the private sector has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the country's crude oil refining field, and this complex is developing day by day.

They added that the crude oil currently being refined in domestic factories is equal to international standards.

“We have 80% of the market. At the moment, 80% of diesel is produced in our country and 20% comes from foreign countries,” said Zabihullah Nazari, deputy of the Union of Crude Oil Refining Factories.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum officials said they are trying to increase the production capacity of Amu Darya oil basin so that all the country's oil needs are met from domestic production.

The ministry officials stated along with the Amu Darya oil basin, they are also trying to attract investment in the Herat oil field to start its extraction.

Economic experts, however, said that if there is an increase in investment in the country's oil sector, along with reducing unemployment, the government's income will also increase significantly.