Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, a former top US diplomat has outlined what he feels were mistakes made in the aftermath.
In a Friday interview with journalist Alex Marquardt on Al Jazeera’s “This is America,” Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad explained how the country’s growing sense of fear led to a spiraling series of decisions that would change the world for years to come.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“The anger was a factor of urgency because people wanted action. What are we going to do about this?” Khalilzad said of the attack.
The events of September 11 are considered the worst foreign attack in U.S. history. Nineteen hijackers crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and fields in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Less than a month after the attack, the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan with the stated purpose of attacking the perpetrator group, al-Qaeda. It was the beginning of a war that would last approximately 20 years.
“You have to put yourself in the context of that time. We were very angry. We were concerned that other attacks might be planned. There might be sleeper cells,” Khalilzad said. “We wanted to contact and arrest as many people as possible, members of al-Qaeda.”
Mr. Khalilzad was a senior director on the National Security Council under then-President George W. Bush at the time of the attack.
He then served as several ambassadors and represented the United States as a top diplomat in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations at various points in his career.
In an interview Friday, he said he was concerned about U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including the decision not to negotiate with the Taliban, which ruled the country at the time of the invasion.
Reports subsequently surfaced that the Taliban were willing to sign a deal with the United States in 2001, early in the war. However, the US reportedly ruled out a deal.
The Taliban fought against U.S.-backed forces for the next two decades until the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. The Taliban have since regained power.
“One of the ideas that came up was that we should have negotiated with the Taliban or included them in the Afghan political process,” Khalilzad said. “I wish that had happened.”
He attributed the decision not to participate in negotiations to several factors, including post-September 11 anger and the United States’ status as a global superpower.
“We were angry and we wanted to get information from them,” Khalilzad said of the Taliban. “But if we could have included them… realistically, it might have been helpful.”
In 2003, two years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States launched another operation against Iraq as part of the growing so-called “war on terror.”
The Bush administration justified that war by citing the now infamous intelligence assessment that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear capabilities. These reports would later be found to be false.
Still, the Iraq war would last more than eight years and lead to the overthrow and execution of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
“With Iraq, well, intelligence was the problem,” Khalilzad said, adding, “Looking back, I think it was the situation, the analysis, the intelligence.”
Khalilzad said at the time that the United States did not believe that Hussein was telling the truth about whether his country had weapons of mass destruction. The United States was also concerned about new “surprise attacks” similar to those launched by al-Qaeda.
“If it weren’t for 9/11, I don’t think we would attack Iraq,” Khalilzad said.
He explained that the US government believes the country “could face a huge surprise attack and attack” if “the issue of Saddam Hussein also permeates”.
“Containment has evolved into large-scale attacks and regime change,” Khalilzad said.
In August, the United States marked five years since its chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The process began in 2020, when President Donald Trump signed a deal with the Taliban during his first term to withdraw all U.S. troops by the next year. It was completed during President Joe Biden’s 2021 term.
The withdrawal was widely criticized for endangering troops and leaving behind Afghans who worked with U.S.-allied forces and were at risk of violence and punishment.
Khalilzad said he agreed with the move to withdraw U.S. troops from the country.
“We’ve been there for 20 years. Afghanistan has changed. The war could have continued indefinitely. The world has changed. Priorities have changed. We have quelled the terrorist threat. That’s what drove us,” he said.
Shortly after U.S. troops withdrew, the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.
But Khalilzad insisted the new relationship was good for the United States, saying, “I think surprisingly the Taliban have been good for American interests in terms of terrorism.”
