The envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Financial Times that the U.S. had secured an agreement under which Ghani would remain in Kabul and Taliban fighters would not enter Afghanistan’s capital while diplomats negotiated a political transition of power in Qatar.
After Ghani fled, he said, the Taliban asked American officials if they planned to take over the security of Kabul, a proposition the U.S. rejected.
“Even at the end, we had an agreement with the Talibs for [them] not to enter Kabul,” Khalilzad told the Financial Times in his first interview since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Khalilzad said he had no inkling “at all” that Ghani was intending to flee. He said the Afghan leader’s decision prompted the city’s security forces to disband – creating a security vacuum and unleashing the chaotic bid to evacuate.
“There were questions of law and order in Kabul after Ghani fled . . . The Talibs [then] . . . say: ‘Are you going to take responsibility for security of Kabul now? . . . And then you know what happened, we weren’t going to take responsibility,” he said.