Former top US diplomat reveals mistakes made after 9/11 attacks

Former US official Zalmay Khalilzad told Al Jazeera that in the wake of the September 11 attacks a climate of fear and anger helped drive rapid, consequential decisions. Speaking 25 years after the attacks, Khalilzad, who was a senior National Security Council director at the time and later served as US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, said policymakers were motivated by urgency and concern about additional attacks. Khalilzad said one major regret concerns the early handling of Afghanistan. He recounted that the US, in the immediate aftermath, prioritized hunting al-Qaeda members and gathering intelligence rather than exploring talks with the Taliban, which then controlled Afghanistan. He acknowledged reports that the Taliban may have been open to a deal in 2001 and said, in hindsight, integrating the movement into a political settlement might have been beneficial. On the Iraq campaign that began in 2003, Khalilzad pointed to serious information problems. The US justification for toppling Saddam Hussein relied on intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction that were later shown to be false. He suggested that the post-9/11 environment — and fears of another unexpected attack — helped push US policy from containment to regime overthrow. Khalilzad also addressed the end of the US military presence in Afghanistan. He said he supported withdrawing troops after two decades, arguing the terrorist threat that had driven the intervention had been greatly reduced and the conflict risked continuing indefinitely. He acknowledged the withdrawal, completed in 2021 following a 2020 agreement to pull out forces, drew sharp criticism for its execution and for leaving at-risk Afghans behind. Khalilzad noted that the Taliban’s return to power has coincided with what he described as a diminished terrorism threat to US interests.