Don't Blame Afghanistan for Blowing Whistle on Zalmay Khalilzad
Don't Blame Afghanistan for Blowing Whistle on Zalmay Khalilzad by Michael Rubin - Washington Examiner
Hamdullah Mohib, national security adviser to Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, broke diplomatic china on Thursday when he told a Washington audience:
"Knowing Ambassador Khalilzad's own history, personal history, he has ambitions in Afghanistan. He has wanted to run for president twice, in 2009 and 2014… The perception in Afghanistan [was that] perhaps all of this talk is to create a caretaker government, of which he will then become the viceroy. We're only saying this because this is the perception."
For his comments, Mohib was summoned to the State Department to be chewed out by David Hale, the undersecretary of state for policy. He may no longer be able to get a U.S. visa, despite having an American wife. American diplomats defended the State Department's action, saying that Mohib’s “ad hominem” attack had no place in diplomacy.
Perhaps Mohib’s language was not saccharine enough for diplomatic snowflakes, but he was right.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, has a long and often regrettable history in Afghanistan affairs. Prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, for example, Khalilzad worked as a consultant for a group in Boston which was in turned hired by UNOCAL which at the time was trying to build a pipeline across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. At the time, Khalilzad worked to normalize U.S. relations with the Taliban and arranged for a senior Taliban official to come to the United States to meet with Clinton administration officials and business leaders…