Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has blasted former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani for failing the US-led peace process and landing Afghans in trouble.
“The US expected its negotiations with the Taliban to be a multiyear process that would have resulted in a peaceful transition of power in Kabul,” Mr. Pompeo said while speaking at the University of Chicago earlier this week. “But because Ghani did not want it to be successful, it did not happen.”
In the Trump administration, Mr. Pompeo held the positions of secretary of state and director of the CIA. He oversaw the US-Taliban negotiations that got underway in Doha, Qatar, in 2018.
When asked if Mr. Ghani had been asked to resign, Mr. Pompeo responded, “Well, he would assume I did but I didn’t. I was incredibly frustrated with President Ghani.”
“It took us to step in and finally get all the Afghans to the bargaining table.” He said when asked how the US launched the peace process.
Since Mr Ghani ‘didn’t like that the US convened with the Taliban” and that’s why he opposed the deal as well.
Asked how he liked talking to the Taliban, Mr Pompeo said a deputy Taliban leader that he met in Doha “almost certainly killed a friend of mine. That’s hard stuff, to walk into a room negotiating with someone that killed someone that you loved, but it mattered for America to get that right.”
But President Ghani, he said, was not up for that. “And that was most unfortunate because in the end you see what happens. Unlike Zelensky, who chose to stay, President Ghani hops on an airplane and heads to some place to go, live a very nice, peaceful life.”
