Kabul (BNA) In an interview with the PBS news, First Vice President Amrullah Saleh said that bringing the US president to the level of a non-entity insurgent group wasn’t a good idea, referring to Trump’s phone call with Taliban’s Mullah Baradar earlier in 2020.
VP Saleh went on saying that Afghans are tired of war but not ready to sell their souls. “The Afghan people, of which I am one of them, they are tired of war. But they are not ready to sell their soul,” he added, as quoted by PBS.
First VP also said that when the United States bypassed Afghan government and reached out to the Taliban directly, was according to him both a surprise and also a dream for the Taliban.
“They brought President Trump over the phone to speak for 45 minutes with who? I couldn’t imagine that. I could not imagine. I don’t think bringing the United States president to the level of a non-entity insurgent group was a good idea,” he went on to say that.
VP Saleh also said that was surprised to see former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement saying that no American was killed in Afghanistan. “We are glad that no American was killed, but he forgot how many Afghans were killed. The way he put that statement, that’s not how you treat your allies.”
VP further said: “They were trying to simplify and say, ‘oh it’s war between Afghans’ and I would say ‘stop it, it’s not war between Afghans, we fight the same enemy as in 2002, if they were your enemy then they are your enemy now.”
Part of the deal with the Taliban was that the Afghan government would release 5000 of their prisoners before the group began peace negotiations with them. This put the government at a major disadvantage for those talks, argues VP Saleh. “By the time the Afghan negotiating team sat down with the Taliban in Doha last November, the group had been bolstered by their discussions with the U.S.”
Answering a question if Afghan forces can survive after US troop’s withdrawal, VP Saleh said that “This is the only military in this region, in the entire region, which is your honest, affordable, straightforward ally.”
