US special envoy for Afghanistan steps down after withdrawal

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The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan is stepping down following the chaotic American withdrawal from the country, the State Department said Monday. 

Zalmay Khalilzad will leave the post this week after more than three years on the job under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He had been criticized for not pressing the Taliban hard enough in peace talks begun while Trump was president but Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked him for his work. 

"I extend my gratitude for his decades of service to the American people," Blinken said of Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Afghanistan. 

Special Representative on Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad testifies during a hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs at Rayburn House Office Building in May on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.  (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

STATE DEPARTMENT IG TO PROBE BIDEN ADMIN’S CHAOTIC AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL 

Khalilzad had initially planned to leave the job in May after Biden’s announcement that the U.S. withdrawal would be completed before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in September. However, he was asked to stay on and did so. 

Khalilzad had served as the special envoy for Afghan reconciliation under both the Trump and Biden administrations since September 2018, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought him on board to lead negotiations with the Taliban and the Afghan government. 

An Afghan native, Khalilzad was unsuccessful in getting the two sides together to forge a power-sharing deal but he did negotiate a U.S. agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that ultimately led to the end of America’s longest-running war. 

The agreement with the Taliban served as the template for the Biden administration's withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, which many believe was conducted too hastily and without enough planning. Thousands of Afghan citizens who worked for U.S. forces there over the past two decades were left behind in the rush to leave as were hundreds of American citizens and legal residents. 

Zalmay Khalilzad, special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation at the State Department, testifies in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on U.S. policy in Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in April. ( T.J. Kirkpatrick-Pool/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden and his aides frequently said the agreement that Khalilzad negotiated tied their hands when it came to the pullout and led to the sudden takeover of the country by the Taliban, although administration critics noted that Biden had abandoned the "conditions-based" requirements for a complete U.S. withdrawal. 

In interviews and in his resignation letter described to The AP, Khalilzad noted that the agreement he negotiated had conditioned the final withdrawal of U.S. forces to the Taliban entering serious peace talks with the Afghan government. He also lamented that those negotiations and consequently the withdrawal had not gone as planned. 

Despite the criticism, Khalilzad remained on the job, although he skipped the first high-level post-withdrawal U.S.-Taliban meeting in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, prompting speculation he was on his way out. Khalilzad will be replaced by his deputy, Thomas West, who led the U.S. delegation to that last round of talks in Doha. 

Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C.,  in April.  (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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However, the U.S. will not be sending a representative to a Russia-hosted conference on Afghanistan this week, the State Department said. Speaking before Blinken's announcement of Khalilzad's departure, department spokesman Ned Price cited "logistics" as the reason the U.S. would not participate in the Moscow talks. 

Khalilzad said in his resignation letter that after leaving government service he would continue to work on behalf of the Afghan people and would offer his thoughts and advice on what went wrong in Afghanistan and the path forward.