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Biden ‘ignored advice’ on US troops withdrawal from Afghanistan: Khalilzad

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US President Joe Biden ignored the counsel of senior US diplomats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who urged him not to pull US troops out of Afghanistan without certain conditions in place, former Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in a transcribed interview released Wednesday.

Khalilzad — who helped negotiate the Doha agreement that led to the complete withdrawal of troops - testified that Biden could have stopped or altered the plan to remove all US forces from Afghanistan by September 2021.

“The State Department — or the secretary and myself, we wanted a conditional withdrawal approach,” he said. “But the ultimate decision was, as we all know, that it was to withdraw based on a timetable.”

Khalilzad said he recommended that the Islamic Emirate and the Afghanistan government at the time reach a separate peace agreement before US troops left the country.

“Secretary Blinken and I, I believe, did recommend that conditionality. That’s my judgment, that conditionality would be the prudent thing to do,” Kalilzad told the committee in his Nov. 8 interview. “But then the response was, ‘Can you get the other side – the Talibs (Islamic Emirate) – not to go back to fighting?”

In his testimony, Khalilzad said such an agreement could have been based on an early 2021 peace negotiation that Khalilzad said visualized a “peace government,” which would have given the Islamic Emirate an equal share of power over Kabul with the then Western-backed Afghan government.

“It was essentially kind of a power-sharing formula that our experts had put together in consultation with outside experts in which the government consists of individuals with ties to both – from the Afghan Government and the Taliban – and be led by somebody acceptable to both sides,” he told the committee.

He said that when reaching such a conditional agreement appeared unlikely, Biden instead decided to move forward with the pullout to avoid IEA attacks on US forces.

Khalilzad said the sudden lack of US support helped enable the Islamic Emirate to retake power, 15 days before the last American service member left the capital.

Khalilzad also told lawmakers that State Department officials had predicted the power-sharing initiative would not have lasted longer than three years without a continued US presence in the country.

He also said at points throughout negotiations with the Islamic Emirate, there were times he believed that the IEA “negotiated merely as a stall tactic to wait out the U.S. until its military forces withdrew to zero.”

Khalilzad believed Biden’s announcement in April 2021 to withdraw all U.S troops negatively affected the morale of the Afghan government forces. He explained that: “The U.S. withdrawal had a psychological impact and negatively affected the relative balance of power for the government. That’s obvious.”

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IEA delegation attends conference for ‘Promoting Mining Cooperation’ in China

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The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum said on Saturday in a statement that its delegation participated in a conference titled "Promoting Mining Cooperation" in China’s Hunan province.

The Ministry stated the conference aims to build a well-equipped laboratory in Afghanistan, increase the capacity of technical and professional employees of the Ministry of Mines, and encourage investors in the mineral resources sector of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Chinese investors expressed their interest in Afghanistan’s gold, copper, mica, talc, oil, gas, lithium, lead and zinc mines.

At the conference, the ministry’s deputy minister of finance and administration and head of the delegation Hussamuddin Saberi talked about Afghanistan's natural resources contracts and investment opportunities and considered holding such programs effective for the relations between the two countries.

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Uzbekistan, EU envoys meet to discuss Afghanistan

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Uzbekistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Ismatulla Irgashev, on Friday met with the EU Special Representative for Central Asia Terhi Hakala.

During the meeting, the parties discussed the current state and prospects of Uzbek-European relations in the Afghan direction, the efforts of the international community to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the country and the possibility of using the international transport and logistics hub in Termez to deliver humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Hakala highly appreciated the efforts of Uzbekistan to develop a consolidated regional position on Afghanistan, establish long-term peace and stability in the country, according to the statement.

The parties expressed mutual interest in continuing bilateral consultations on the Afghan issue, the statement added.

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UN expert calls for comprehensive, rights-focused action plan for Afghanistan

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A UN expert on Friday called on the international community to devise and implement a comprehensive, human rights-centered action plan to address the human rights crisis in Afghanistan.

“The absence of a unified, forceful response from the international community has emboldened the Taliban (IEA),” UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said.

In his latest report to the UN General Assembly, Bennett said that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is worsening, which includes systematic gender oppression, amounting to gender persecution and which many Afghans term “gender apartheid” with intergenerational implications.

Bennett expressed concern about the new “vice and virtue” law, announced in August, which he believes has institutionalized an expanding list of restrictions that “blatantly violate the rights of women and girls.”

He also expressed concern about the “shrinking civic space” in Afghanistan, the situation of minorities, journalists, and former government officials and security personnel.

“Justice, equality, and the rule of law are being systematically undermined,” he said.

The UN expert also called for increased funding and support for Afghan civil society and humanitarian efforts to mitigate the crisis.

Bennett urged the IEA to reverse its “repressive policies” and reinstate basic human rights. He pressed the international community to take a coordinated, multifaceted approach to support the Afghan people.

Bennett urged states not to normalize relations with the IEA until there are demonstrable human rights improvements and pathways to justice and accountability.

This comes as the Islamic Emirate has said that it is committed to ensuring human rights, including the rights of women and girls, according to Sharia, and this is an internal issue of Afghanistan.

The Islamic Emirate has banned Richard Bennett from traveling to Afghanistan, saying that he exaggerates small issues.

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