The Afghan Impasse, Part 4: History Repeats

Full transcript

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[HAUNTING INSTRUMENTAL RUBĀB MUSIC]

JENN WILLIAMS, HOST:

Welcome back to The Negotiators, a production of Doha Debates and Foreign Policy. I’m your host, Jenn Williams. This is episode four of our special series, “The Afghan Impasse,” exploring 20 years of failed attempts to negotiate a peace deal in Afghanistan.

[HAUNTING INSTRUMENTAL RUBĀB MUSIC]

JENN: If you haven’t started with episode one, we recommend that you go back and do that now. 

In this episode, we’re going to hear from reporter Ali Latifi. Ali is the Asia editor at The New Humanitarian. He’s been reporting from Kabul since 2001, and he stayed behind after the withdrawal of US troops in August of 2021 to report on what was happening on the ground.

NEWS CLIP OF AMERICAN WOMAN #1:

Ali Latifi, let’s begin with you. You are in Kabul. Describe …

NEWS CLIP OF AMERICAN WOMAN #2:

Ali Latifi. We reached him on the phone in Kabul after he had …

NEWS CLIP OF BRITISH WOMAN:

Ali, the Taliban promised a more moderate rule. But the interim government …

JENN: We asked Ali to tell us about the failed negotiations that led directly to the return of the Taliban. And for Ali, this story is personal. He was born in Kabul, and he grew up in California’s Bay area in a neighborhood of Afghan Americans that’s often called Little Kabul. Ali reported from Afghanistan for all seven years of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s administration, and he came to know its inner workings. The Ghani administration has been widely accused of corruption by both Afghan and US officials. And I think we have to say this: Ali was already skeptical of the Ghani administration before we asked him to look into these negotiations. But after talking directly with the people involved, his concerns only became larger. 

ALI LATIFI:

I was angry. I was really, really, really, really angry, because I felt like you had this opportunity. You could have done something for your country. This didn’t have to end this way.

JENN: Here’s Ali Latifi with “The Afghan Impasse,” episode four: “History Repeats.”

JENN: I want to start where our last episode left off, and that’s with the signing of the Doha Agreement on February 29th, 2020. Where was Afghan president Ashraf Ghani? Where were you? Just set the scene for me. 

ALI: Ashraf Ghani was somewhere in the palace. There was a big event. He was there. Doctor Abdullah, who was head of the reconciliation, he was there. Other major leaders were there. There were US generals there. And yeah, they were all standing there looking, you know, staring at the screen, watching the signing live. 

[SOUND OF CROWD APPLAUDING]

ALI: There seemed to be no objection. There seemed to be no discord, nothing. It just seemed like another formal government event. I was at home in Kabul. I had all kinds of radio and TV interviews that day, but I don’t think any of us knew what it would turn into.

There were so many false starts, to the point where, in 2015, I remember we were in the palace, all of us journalists working for foreign media outlets. I was working for the Los Angeles Times. The president invited us all for a meeting, for a briefing, and he had said that he had sent a team to Pakistan to start the process of some kind of talks. And sitting at this table in the palace, in my head, I was like—you know, naïve, like, oh my God, what if, like, this really leads to peace? What if I’m actually here for history? What if things really change? Because you have to remember, like, from my generation on, we were all basically born into war. Right? 

JENN: Right. 

ALI: I’ll never forget the first time my mother came back in 2013. She said to me, she was like, “Ali, you were born in this country in war, you left it in war, you came back in war, and you leave it again in war.” So to me, the thought of an actual peace just seemed improbable, but also, like, enticing, right? Like, maybe everyone will come back now. Maybe things will get better. As soon as we got out of the meeting, we were all standing there, and all my other friends, all the other Afghan journalists, just started laughing, like, oh God, he’s wasting our time again. Like, like, what is this now about? 

JENN: Mm.

ALI: It was just like a balloon had just deflated right away. 

JENN: So you have the 2015 moment where you’re actually kind of hopeful, and then you realize, oh, maybe I’m being naïve, because everyone else is laughing at this. And—OK. So then 2020 happens. Did you have that feeling again? Or was it this time, you were one of the ones laughing too?

ALI: I don’t know if I was laughing. I wanted it to be true. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: And I wanted it to make a difference. But the difference this time was, I knew the Afghan government very well. 

JENN: Yeah.

ALI: I knew how corrupt they were. I knew how selfish they were. I knew how little they cared about the country and the people. I knew how many of them had foreign passports and were constantly talking about being from somewhere else. So I had even less faith in them than I did the Americans or the Taliban. 

JENN: Wow. 

ALI: Because I knew them. 

JENN: Yeah.

ALI: I didn’t really know the Karzai government. I barely knew Hamid Karzai.

JENN: Sure. 

ALI: But I knew the Ashraf Ghani government very, very well. And I saw just how despicable they were.

It became very clear that people were lying to him. Were keeping information from him. If you’re not telling the leader the truth, how is he going to make the proper decision? Even if he has the best intentions, how is he going to make the proper decision? 

JENN: So there’s this Doha Agreement signing the very next day.

NEWS CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN:

In less than 24 hours, president Ashraf Ghani went from praising the agreement to now saying that he refused certain aspects.

NEWS CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1:

The president of Afghanistan is against freeing thousands of Taliban prisoners …

NEWS CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: 

That was supposed to pave the way for direct talks between the two sides, but President Ghani has said the swap cannot be a precondition for intra-Afghan peace talks. 

JENN: Ghani says—

ALI: Right.

JENN: —“I’m not going to release the Taliban prisoners.” Did that surprise you? 

ALI: Yeah, of course it surprised me. He knew what was in that agreement. He stood there happily watching it being signed. He could’ve said that on February 28th or 29th. He didn’t need to say it on March 1st. I knew that the people around him would find a way to twist his hand and to have him derail the whole thing. 

JENN: You spoke with an Afghan American journalist named Akmal Dawi?

ALI: Mm-hmm.

JENN: And he told you that he felt from the beginning that there were elements within the republic who were deliberately trying to spoil the process. Before we get to how he came to that conclusion, can you tell me who Akmal is and how he first got involved in the negotiations? 

ALI: So Akmal is a Voice of America journalist. He’s an Afghan American. He’s lived in the United States for—pretty sure, like, more than a decade now. And he was approached by officials in the Department of State to help translate in these Doha negotiations.

AKMAL DAWI: 

And sure enough, I found myself in Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where Ambassador Khalilzad was leading an interagency delegation of US officials about to enter this historic, secretive talks with the Taliban on the way forward. 

ALI: I mean, I don’t think he ever would have imagined that he would be sitting with a Talib and, you know, dressed however he wanted to be dressed. You know?

JENN: Right.

ALI: Being able to discuss his experiences, both of the Civil War and of the Taliban times, and have them listen to him at the very least. 

AKMAL: I remember one time over lunch, there was a mixed group of Americans and the Taliban, and we talked about our bitter history, our civil war in Afghanistan in the 90s. And I spoke about a terrible experience we had when the rockets were landing, that there was fighting, and there were so many brutalities, and we had no future, and there was no food, extreme poverty. And at one time, I looked at the Taliban’s delegate and he was crying. And that—I was so shocked. I said, “I’m—I’m sorry.” He said, “No. Do you think we are not human, we Taliban? Do you think we don’t feel the pain? Do you think we don’t have family, relatives? My son died in those conflicts. We belong to the same land. We’ve suffered too.”

ALI: You know, to see that, like, the one thing that unfortunately unites every Afghan over the last 40, 50 years are the losses and the traumas of all of these wars, of all of these conflicts. And of course—I mean, even today, I can’t imagine myself, like, sitting, you know, with a Taliban minister and like, you know, having a meal. So I couldn’t imagine it, you know, in 2018.

JENN: So, yeah, I can imagine that, like, having the meal, having chai, like, actually having the conversations, that—it’s, it’s something we talk about a lot on the show, too, is that, like, seeing the other side as humans, right? Like, as people—

ALI: That’s very important. 

JENN: Yeah.

ALI: That’s very important because during, like, the 20 years of the occupation, there were literally radio and TV commercials, like, “All the Talibs are murderers. They’re evil. They blow up schools, they burn masjid, they do this, they do that.” And then at the same time, the Taliban were feeding into their people, “These people are all heathens.” Right? 

JENN: Right. 

ALI: “They’ve all lost their way. They’re not Afghan. They’re not Muslim. They’re nothing.”

JENN: Yeah, that’s really fascinating, because—yeah, I mean, it makes sense, on one side, to say, like, “Oh, we see the Taliban as monsters, and so now I want to humanize them,” but that’s right, like, the Taliban had to humanize everyone else. 

ALI: Yeah. They had to realize that there’s 30 million people who were a victim to the occupation and to them. 

JENN: So, so as I said, you know, Akmal, he felt from the beginning that there were elements within the republic who were trying to spoil the process. Can you tell me what specifically, like, brought him to that conclusion? 

ALI: Part of it was knowing the people within the government. 

JENN: Right. Like you said. 

ALI: And, and, and the other part was sort of hearing about what was happening in Kabul. Right? Because this is the thing, you know—even during the republic in 2014, when, when John Kerry essentially came and settled the disputed election and created this national unity government, there was all this infighting about, you know, who sits where in cabinet meetings. And, you know, like, Doctor Abdullah sent a memo to the entire government that—“You have to address me as the Honorable Doctor Abdullah Abdullah.” And, you know, I don’t understand how this solves it, but they said in the cabinet meetings, they had to build a special square table so that neither Doctor Abdullah nor President Ghani were seen as the head of the table.

JENN: Right. 

ALI: And then also knowing that there was already infighting—even more so than between the Abdullah and Ghani camps—within the Ghani camp itself. Yes, they all campaigned for him, but then they all divided into sub-camps and were all trying to sabotage each other. 

JENN: I think that’s so important. I think that’s something that, that Americans really don’t understand about this negotiation in particular.

ALI: Also because it’s unexpected, right? 

JENN: Right.

ALI: You would never imagine a presidential administration to be fighting to that level amongst each other. 

JENN: So I, I imagine watching that, it’s just—of course he gets that idea of, like, OK, this isn’t going to go anywhere. 

AKMAL: It took a very long time for President Ghani to build that team of Afghan delegates and send them over to Doha. Initially, they had a team of, like, 80 people they wanted to send. And then the Taliban said, “This is so imbalanced. We don’t have 80 people to have them sit with. They are so disorganized. They are so divided. If they cannot form a delegation to come to Doha and talk with us, how are they going to, you know, make a government?”

JENN: Was the Taliban acting, like, relatively cohesively at that point? 

ALI: That’s what shocked everybody. I spoke to Akmal. We also spoke to Fatima Gilani, who was one of the negotiators, and they both said that—both during the intra-Afghan talks and during the talks with the US—the Taliban were very clear. You know, they had, essentially, a piece of paper with a few points every day, mainly one person talked, and they stuck to a script. That was precisely what shocked people. That, you know, these people—that, again, were billed as these murderers as, like, these quote-unquote, “backwards cave people,” all of this—were actually, you know, very orderly and on-point and on-topic. And again, it’s interesting, because in a lot of ways they were a disparate group, you know, because sure, they had central leadership, but then they also had so many ground forces all over the country who didn’t necessarily always follow the edicts. The fact that they were able to, in this political capacity, stick to a script—because, again, look, these republic people couldn’t do that. 

JENN: Meanwhile, the Taliban’s like, “We’ve got our talking points.” 

ALI: Yeah. 

JENN: “Let’s go.” 

ALI: Yeah, yeah. 

JENN: Akmal described the trouble that the republic had choosing a reasonable number of delegates. And then they look at the people on the, on the list. Were they the people who were actually positioned to represent the people of Afghanistan? 

ALI: The frustration of the people with the government side was that it was quite obvious that these were political appointees. They weren’t people who necessarily knew how to make peace. They weren’t necessarily people who fully understood how to debate religiously with the Taliban, even maybe culturally. They were just political appointees. You know? If you couldn’t make them ambassador, if you couldn’t make them minister, then you would just send them to Doha for however long, stay in a resort, and get to say that they were part of this process, you know? 

JENN: Rather than—they are a qualified negotiator who is good at negotiating. 

ALI: Exactly. Or, that these are people who are actually respected amongst the common people. Because you have to remember, you had the children of warlords. Their families profited from war and death and destruction, and their children never understood the life of an average Afghan man or woman their age. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: And that, that really offended people because they were, like, these, these people, their legacy of war. And now they’re profiting again.

[INSTRUMENTAL RUBĀB MUSIC]

JENN: You’re listening to “The Afghan Impasse,” a special seven-episode season of The Negotiators from Doha Debates and Foreign Policy.

[SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

JENN: So the intra-Afghan peace talks finally begin on September 12th, 2020. This is more than six months after the Doha Agreement was signed, but not much was accomplished. Tell me why not.

ALI: From my understanding, it was just constantly talks about talks. 

JENN: Mm.

ALI: You know, in the beginning they were talking about, oh, we have to organize the framework of how we’re going to talk, and, and, and the timeline, and—I don’t know if this was due to ego or a stalling technique or both. And they kept saying, “Oh, we’ve made good progress.” Like, months would go by and they’d be like, “Oh, we’ve made good progress on that.”

JENN: On the structure of how we’re eventually going to talk. [CHUCKLES]

ALI: Yeah, exactly! It’s like, just get to the talking. You know, you’re, you’re in this resort together, like, just get to the talking.

JENN: And that’s so interesting, because I’ve talked to—obviously, this is our fourth season of the show, and, and I’ve talked to a lot of, you know, professional negotiators and, and several of them have said that diplomacy is process. You know, figuring out what are the terms, what is the framework, like, who—how many on your side gets to come, how many on our side. But at a certain point, we’re just being ridiculous. Like, now it’s just become an impediment. 

ALI: Here’s the thing, right? OK, I could see why diplomacy between Washington and the Taliban would be a lot of process. 

JENN: Mm-hmm.

ALI: But theoretically, these are both Afghan sides. So how do they not know how to speak to one another?

JENN: Yeah.

ALI: Like, the Afghan people have been negotiating with each other and having, you know, jirgas and shuras and so on. And even, like, within villages and districts, like, discussions with each other, trying to sort these things out. If you’re really Afghan, you should know how to do this. 

JENN: So Zalmay Khalilzad—the American diplomat who had negotiated the Doha agreement—he told us that part of the problem was semantics.

ZALMAY KHALILZAD: 

One way out is to agree on a power sharing, which would be a new government. But President Ghani, he didn’t like the new—the word “new,” because he thought that the right thing to do would be for the Talibs to join him. And the Talibs would not consider that, because they said that would show that they only fought for power. 

ALI: So you’re, you’re dealing with two obstinate sides. And to be fair, I don’t—I don’t understand how it could have been a continuation of the old government.

JENN: Right. 

ALI: Because the old government itself didn’t like the old government, and get along with each other. So I don’t understand why they wanted to keep a broken system going. 

JENN: We also—as you mentioned—we spoke to Fatima Gilani, one of the negotiators for the republic. What did she have to say about how Ghani was approaching the negotiations?

ALI: Exactly what everybody thought: That he had no plan. 

FATIMA GILANI:

What we lacked was a guidance and leadership—which should come from our country—that these are your limits, these are the chips that you can wheel and deal and negotiate upon. 

ALI: So she said, like, “I don’t even know what my, my red lines are.”

JENN: Wow. 

ALI: “I know what my personal red lines are, but I don’t know what the government’s red lines are. I don’t know what is negotiable as an overall strategy and what isn’t. Personally, yes, I know, but as a representative of a government? No.” She said there was more order—again, see what I mean by political appointments—by those who were appointed by Doctor Abdullah.

JENN: Mm.

ALI:  And she said they were more in contact with Doctor Abdullah. Again, they’re the same government.

JENN: Right.

ALI: And yet there were people who you knew were clearly appointed by Doctor Abdullah and those that were clearly appointed by President Ghani. And they went in with that mentality. And she felt like they weren’t being given the support from Kabul. 

FATIMA: Everything was blocked by the presidential office. Every way was blocked by him. I mean the international community, they were expressing this worry that President Ghani is not very serious about this talk. Even if he’s serious, he wants an opposite outcome out of it.

JENN: You also spoke to Abdul Salam Zaeef. He’s a former Taliban diplomat who spent years in, in Guantanamo. And he told you that he was working behind the scenes to try to bring the sides together. Tell me, what did that look like? 

ALI: In Guantanamo, there were, according to him, people who were either directly, like, part of the US government, or somehow, you know, were tied enough to them, who would approach him and kind of, like, talk to him the way you would, like, as an Afghan to an elder. So he used, basically, the fact that he knew all of the sides to try and ensure that there were actually some kind of talks.

JENN: And, and Zaeef said he even called President Ghani. What, what did—

ALI: He went to see him.

JENN: Oh, he went to see him. So—

ALI: He went to see him in the final months of the republic. And he said, “You have to take this seriously. I’m telling you right now, you have to take this seriously. 

[SOUND OF ABDUL SALAM ZAEEF SPEAKING IN PASHTO]

ZAEEF’S TRANSLATOR:

I wanted to convince him not to ruin the peace process. His belief was that if the Taliban are not accepting others, they should at least accept me as the president and I should remain in power. 

ALI: Mullah Zaeef told him—he said, “That’s impossible. That’s never going to happen.”

[SOUND OF ABDUL SALAM ZAEEF SPEAKING IN PASHTO]

ZAEEF’S TRANSLATOR: I responded, “If you want the Taliban to officially recognize you, even for one minute, it is impossible. Discard that thought, because recognizing you means recognizing the republic, the occupation, your laws, and your bilateral agreements with the US. The Taliban are not foolish. Erase that idea from your mind. If you desire peace in Afghanistan, you have to make sacrifices. 

ALI: “You have to make that sacrifice. You have to give up this position for 30-something-million people.”

JENN: And he wouldn’t.

ALI: He didn’t want to do it.

JENN: Around this time, there was also a presidential election in the United States, right? So—

ALI: Mm-hm.

JENN: —pretty much the only thing that the two candidates seem to agree on was that the US should get out of Afghanistan. But still, the negotiations stagnated until after the inauguration. Why? What happened there? 

ALI: Because they were hoping that Biden would be more amenable to staying. Which is—

JENN: Ah.

ALI: —ironic, because anybody who’s paid attention to Biden over the last 20 years knew that he hated this war. But, I mean, I was talking to people within the government at the time, and they were saying, like, “Oh, we’re just going to wait out the election. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see what happens. Trump is crazy. Trump is—” At first, they loved Trump. At first, they’re like, “Oh, this is great. This guy’s a war hawk. He’s going to continue the war. And, you know, we’re going to be fine.” Then, obviously, Trump made it very clear at a certain point that, “I’m done, I’m out.” And then they were hedging all their bets on Biden. And then, you know, we saw how that ended.

JENN: Right. So I want to talk about that. On, on April 14th, 2021, now-president Joe Biden announced the unconditional withdrawal of, of US troops. How did people in Kabul respond to that announcement? 

ALI: So, so this is what I want to say. The people of Afghanistan, by and large, had been sick of this occupation since I first went back in 2011, right? At that point, they were already over it. The average people. I’m not talking about the ones who profited off of the war, but the average people. 

JENN: Sure.

ALI: By 2021, they were completely sick of it. But what everybody was angry at was the unconditional part. The fact that he put no pressure on either side to take the negotiation seriously. That he put no pressure on the Taliban to enact an actual ceasefire. That’s what angered people. They had no problem with the US leaving. What they had a problem with was: You’re leaving us in the hands of either a corrupt government or our would-be murderers without any sort of restrictions or guidelines or conditions on them. Not only that, but, like, you pay the government’s bills. Like, every single member of that government, the reason they have a salary is because of you.

JENN: You had leverage!

ALI: You have the most leverage. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: And you also have leverage with the Taliban, in that you signed an agreement with them and you can say, “I signed this agreement, but this agreement says X, Y and Z, and you haven’t abided by it.” And the fact that that didn’t take place is what angered and scared people. 

JENN: We also spoke to Hekmat Karzai, who was deputy foreign minister under Ashraf Ghani. He told us that in the spring of 2021, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Taliban made an official offer to share power. 

HEKMAT KARZAI:

Let us adopt the 1964 constitution. We will take the lead and we will have a joint government. This was a constitution that I think would have allowed so many things. I mean, it would have allowed us to keep our institutions, to keep our values, to keep our flag, and so many things. And I came back to, to Kabul and I raised that issue officially. It was also raised within the negotiation team—in the negotiation teams—to the Afghan government. Yet the leadership of the Afghan government just dismissed it, saying, “Oh, we have our own constitution.” It was mostly dismissed by Ghani, because he was under the assumption that he still had leverage, but he did not have leverage.

JENN: Karzai felt like this could have been a real opportunity. Do you agree? 

ALI: Of course it could have. You know, in the interview with Akmal Dawi, he said that, you know, some Talib official—I can’t remember which one—had essentially said to him, you know, like, “We want to set it up so that people like you come back and become deputy minister and that you can lead things. We know that we don’t have the capacity, and we don’t necessarily want to be running offices and ministries and whatnot—definitely not by ourselves, if at all.” So it would have given people a lot of hope, because it probably would have seemed like a middle road. You know, maybe the Taliban could have helped bring down some of the corruption that the republic was so known for, and maybe the former-republic people could sort of mitigate against some of the very extreme views of the Taliban.

JENN: So many—just missed opportunities. 

ALI: Yeah. And, you know, the question is, how did it fall apart? Why did it fall apart? The US was still bankrolling the republic, so why didn’t they put pressure on both sides to be like, hey, this is the best either side is going to get? I think, I think these are all questions that people have, that all sides failed.

JENN: Zalmay Khalilzad told us that the US hoped that the Afghan forces would perform better during the withdrawal. 

ZALMAY: We thought that, given the number of troops—300,000 plus the weapons, the training—that if the government could demonstrate that it can defend itself, fight effectively, then maybe the Talibs would take them more seriously and negotiate more seriously. 

JENN: Very obviously not what happened. Tell me about that. What do you—what do you think about that? 

ALI: I’m sure that they think that, but it was unrealistic. I am someone who had been all across that country, had seen the situation of the soldiers and the police and security forces and, you know, in 2020, if I remember correctly, I went to Logar Province, which is about 40 minutes south of Kabul, and at that time was one of the least-safe provinces in all of Kabul. I was staying with the governor at the time. In his own compound, there were soldiers that had not been paid for six months. In one of the least-secure provinces in the country.

JENN: Wow.

ALI: You know, they said, “We don’t have new shoes. We don’t even have, like, walkie-talkies. We don’t have enough bullets. We don’t have enough guns.” If you—if you’re not being paid, and you’re not given the equipment that you need, plus you hear reports that they’re killing civilians too, plus you don’t see—especially outside the major cities—you don’t see any real development. You keep hearing stories about fraudulent elections and about corrupt officials and all. What are you fighting for? 

JENN: Right. And I do want to say, like, in their defense, like, there were plenty who did fight very hard. And—

ALI: But that’s what I’m saying. They fought despite the challenges. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: Despite the challenges, they fought. They tried.

NEWS CLIP OF PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:

American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. 

NEWS CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1:

This idea that they wouldn’t fight for their country, I think, is kind of outrageous. Sixty or so …

NEWS CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2:

I’m talking north of 50, 60, 70,000 have died fighting for their country, dying fighting the Taliban. Now …

ALI: Now, if you don’t have enough supplies, you don’t have enough ammunition, you haven’t seen your family—what are you going to do? 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: And again, like, it was absolutely despicable of Americans to say that. But it was also despicable of the government, the Kabul government, to put these guys in that situation. 

JENN: Right. Because the money was flowing in. Right? 

ALI: Right.

JENN: Like, the money for the boots was there. It just wasn’t going to where it was supposed to go. 

ALI: Exactly.

NEWS CLIP OF MALE BRITISH REPORTER: 

Well, we have two eyewitnesses confirming that the city of Zaranj in southwestern Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban …

JENN: So on August 6th, 2021, Nimruz falls. 

NEWS CLIP OF MALE BRITISH REPORTER: … And that would be the first provincial capital to be in the Taliban’s hands. 

JENN: What was the response from the republic? 

ALI: Silence. Absolute si—and this is what, to this day, I—I’m still so upset at. So before that, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense suddenly got really good with me. And any question I would ask him, he would answer. If I needed help arranging something, no problem. Very open, responsive on WhatsApp, everything. 

JENN: Mm.

ALI: That man disappeared. Messages, calls, whatever. Just—the man didn’t exist. 

JENN: Wow. 

ALI: It was so—it was so night and day. It was like a switch. 

JENN: So what—I mean, what was the mood like in the country? I mean, especially as the—as the Talibs get closer and closer to Kabul, what was the mood in the city? Panic? 

ALI: Panic. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: You know, when Nimruz and Farah fell, people were like, OK, they’re far off, and they weren’t very well-managed anyways. And maybe they’ll get it back at a certain point, you know. But then … every day. 

JENN: Yeah. 

ALI: I mean, there were days where, like, three would fall. And it was terror. It was, it was fear. It was this, this creeping sense, you know, that, that something big was about to happen. You know? Imagine 34 provinces fall, and the entire time, nobody says anything. There is no television address. There is no statement. There’s nothing. There’s no apology. There’s no promise that, don’t worry, we’ll get it back. 

JENN: God, that must have been terrifying. 

ALI: Yeah. Especially once the provinces started to fall, to see that nobody really said, “We have to apply pressure to both of these sides.” I recently talked to someone in, like, the US diplomatic corps. I brought this point up and they had said, “Oh, well, you know, there was no way we weren’t going to, like, send any more soldiers. And I said, “No one wanted that. No one needed that. All you had to do was, like, exert your force at a negotiating table.”

JENN:  Do you think the Biden administration just thought they had more time, or did they just, straight up, just wash their hands of it?

ALI: No, I think they washed their hands of it. Because if—this is the thing, is, is, like—if you followed Joe Biden’s career, especially in relation to Afghanistan, he had no interest in the country, and he still has no interest in the country.

The day of August 15th, there were all these rumors that certain former officials who were abroad would come back, and Hamid Karzai and Doctor Abdullah would also be there, and there would be some kind of a joint government. There were all these proposed cabinet lists that were being sent around that gave people some level of hope that, OK, at least they could try and mitigate a little bit of the extreme ways of the Taliban and bring in some of that knowledge, you know, from day one.

JENN: So then that same day, August 15th, just nine days after the fall of Nimruz, President Ashraf Ghani climbs aboard a helicopter and flees the country. How did you hear that he was gone?

ALI: So again, like I said, I knew people who were very close to him, and one of them, who was leaving that day herself, called me and said—she said, “Oh, I’m going to head to the airport.” And I remember I joked with her, I said, “So when is Ghani leaving?” She’s like, “He’s not leaving, Ali. Why would he leave?” And then around—I think it’s, like, around 4 or 5 p.m. Kabul time—the news came that Ghani had fled. 

NEWS CLIP OF MALE BRITISH REPORTER #1:

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has gone. He’s left the country …

NEWS CLIP OF MALE BRITISH REPORTER #2:

In a social media post, Ghani explained he left to avoid bloodshed …

NEWS CLIP OF FEMALE AUSTRALIAN REPORTER:

The Afghan government had been negotiating with the Taliban for a political settlement, but its leverage had weakened with every loss on the battlefield. 

ALI: Everybody was angry. People assumed he would flee, but I guess no one imagined it in the way it happened. 

JENN: So Fatima was in Doha preparing for another round of talks when she heard the news. What do you know about what that was like for members of the negotiating team when that happened? Like they’re, they’re literally getting ready to do what they think are negotiations.

ALI: Based on the way she described it, they, like—at first they’re like, “Wait, who? What? Like, who fled? What happened?” 

FATIMA: No one believed that this man would run away. No one. That was a time of extreme disappointment. A leader who abandons? A leader who, just hours before, went on television and said that “I would never leave you alone”? This was a huge shock for all of us. 

ALI: They were the representatives of his government that were meant to figure out what to do. 

JENN: Right. 

ALI: What were they going to do in Doha? Like, what were they going to say to these guys? You know, what would these guys think? Like, “Oh, your—your leader fled?” 

JENN: That’s a bit awkward. [CHUCKLES]

ALI: “He sent you here. He ran away. And he didn’t tell you?” I think it was just shock and disbelief and anger and frustration. And I think, also, a sense of confirmation of what they suspected all along, that they never had an intention to create peace.

JENN: Before I let Ali go, I wanted to ask him to talk a little bit more about US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. We’ve heard from him throughout the series. He was born and raised in Afghanistan, but he’s now very much an American, and he’s been working in the US government and representing the US abroad since the 1980s. He’s also the man who negotiated the Doha Agreement on behalf of the United States. So I wanted to know, how is he seen by Afghans?

ALI: [LAUGHS] Smarmy, sly, very slick. Kind of like a used-car salesman, like the cliché of a used-car salesman. Khalilzad was never seen as a reliable, truthful, honorable figure. Him aligning himself with Trump also angered people. Him then becoming the chief negotiator—and, by a lot of people’s views, sort of a proxy for the Taliban—also angered people. 

JENN: So once the Doha agreement was signed, how did people’s perspective of Khalilzad change? Did it change? 

ALI: No, I think it confirmed it. [CHUCKLES]

JENN: In our next episode, we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of pushing forward with the story, we’re going to go back and look at it again from the perspective of just one man: Zalmay Khalilzad. 

ZALMAY: I know that there is always a lot of attention to the agreement, to the Doha Agreement, but not to the fact there’s two presidents from two parties to say, “We don’t believe this is working. We want to leave.”

JENN: And we’re going to ask the really tough question.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: 

The accusation is that you sold out Afghanistan. 

ZALMAY: No, that—the— [LAUGHS]. It isn’t what some people allege or charge. 

JENN: That’s next time on “The Afghan Impasse” from The Negotiators. 

The Negotiators is a podcast from Doha Debates and Foreign Policy. This episode was reported by Ali Latifi. Karen Given is this season’s executive producer. Original music written by Afghan composer Arson Fahim, and performed by Arson Fahim and Afghan rubāb player Siddique Ahmad. Our production team includes Laura Rosbrow-Telem, Rob Sachs, Rosie Julin, Claudia Teti, Japhet Weeks, Jigar Mehta, Amjad Atallah and Dan Ephron. Thanks to Nelufar Hedayat, Govinda Clayton and James Wolley for helping create the show. 

Foreign Policy is a magazine of news and ideas from around the world. We encourage you to subscribe at foreignpolicy.com/subscribe. 

Doha Debates is a production of Qatar Foundation, where the most urgent issues of our time are discussed and debated. Learn more at dohadebates.com.