Speech delivered by Mr Amrullah Saleh on the occasion of the joint conference of the Paris Academy of Geopolitics and Geopragma in Paris on April 22nd, 2025.
A Strategic Dialogue on Peace and Geopolitics – Keynote Remarks by Amrullah Saleh – Chairman and Leader of AGT[1],
From Betrayal to Resilience: Afghanistan’s Struggle Post-9/11 and the Collapse of Western Moral Authority
The issue of Afghanistan is massive. I was navigating myself on which topic to choose in order to be relevant to the interest of the participants in Paris, to our Western audience, and also to the greater general public of Afghanistan. I have been a practitioner, I have been a policymaker, and also, I have been almost at the top of the pyramid of power for a while. I have been at the bottom of the pyramid and in the middle too. I do not want to take you back to the start of the turbulence, which was 1979 and the 1980s. So, I would like to focus specifically on the most interesting period, which is the post-Masoud era, the Western intervention, 9/11, and the experience of us working with the Western alliance led by the United States of America.
My focus will be on the period post-9/11, post the killing of our leader, the great Ahmad Shah Masoud, to August 2021, how I see the situation now, and how our diagnosis and perspective of the future are. First, August 15, 2021, was not only about the collapse of Afghanistan and the republic system only. I want to make it very bold and clear: it also marked the date signifying the collapse of the morale of the Western alliance. On August 15, 2021, whatever moral standing the United States had in Afghanistan and in the region collapsed. It collapsed in front of the eyes of the world. On that day, the West, led by the United States, or, let’s be very clear and simple, the United States of America, smashed every commodity named morality and values and pushed the good majority of the Afghan people into the cage of wolves, zombies, and under the bus.
Since that day, 8 million Afghans have lost their homes. They are either internally displaced because they are chased by the Taliban or they have left the country. They have primarily gone to neighboring countries, largely the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Türkiye, Central Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and a very small number of them have been evacuated to Western countries. The mainstream American media, since August 2021, has been trying to blame the Afghan people, the Afghan politicians, the Afghan culture, anything associated with Afghanistan for this colossal failure. This media is like a flood and, at times, washes away everything in its way, perhaps sometimes sparing lonely trees that have deep roots, and maybe I am one of them, and they have not been able to silence me.
August 15 is when the United States of America said no to morality, said no to values, said no to human relations, said no to emotions, said no to human sentiments, and preferred to take it as a naked, largely anti-human interest. Let’s say it as it is: since 2020, no American media has ever mentioned that there was an SPA; no American media or politician is saying that there was a BSA with the legal, legitimate state of Afghanistan. No American media or politician is mentioning the number of bodies Afghanistan lost in that chaos. What they are repeating is 2,500 American servicemen and women who lost their lives while serving in Afghanistan. There are two types of deaths: the Afghan deaths, which are not counted, and the Golden Souls, which are the Western Souls who have died in that cause. They have names, they have faces, they have ranks, they have families, they have memories, and tens of thousands of my countrymen who believed in the promise and who trusted the word of the Western powers, specifically the words of the sole superpower of our time, don’t exist. What we have inherited is tens of thousands of graves and hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows.
The lesson one that I am going to pass to a future generation of Afghans and also to those who are still in the scene who have not given up, my number one takeaway from my very direct work with the CIA, with the Pentagon, with the State Department, with USAID, with the US diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, with almost every Western intelligence service that rushed to Afghanistan post-9/11, is this: they come there, they exploit your poverty, they exploit your naivety, they exploit your sincerity, and then they switch off their contact numbers and go. It may not be an applicable lesson for all our foreign relations, but certainly, this was the second time the United States backstabbed the Afghan people. They backstabbed us in the ‘90s after the fall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union; they abandoned us, they stopped assisting us. They gave us ruins, they gave us destruction, and all of the alliance we had with them in the ‘80s was forgotten. They came back in 2001; I can go on with the names of individuals who came and promised. They said, “We will stay, we will assist you, we will not make them a mistake of the past, we are ashamed of our past, this time this is a long haul. We will not allow Afghanistan to become a black hole again,” but what happened? They abandoned us again. Not only did they abandon us again, but after abandoning the Afghan people, to this very moment that I am talking to you, they are providing tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. I want to repeat: they have provided over $18 billion to the Taliban since 2021.
A noble American soul by the name of Lisa Curtis was quoted yesterday. She was a member of the Doha negotiation team. She was a senior staffer in the National Security Council of the United States. She said, “We presented Afghanistan to the Taliban like a birthday cake.” Let me make another quote from a person who I know very closely and I have featured in his book, Henry Crumpton, a very senior CIA officer who has written a book called The Art of Intelligence. “We went to Afghanistan not to defeat the Taliban or ask them to surrender. We went to Afghanistan to secretly recruit the Taliban to help us.”
The public narrative that was given to us from 2001 to August 2021, based on these testimonies and papers that we get now, was deception. It is very easy to say that Afghans were corrupt, it is very easy to say that Afghanistan is not fixable, it is very easy to say that we are a country of drugs and etc. All those excuses, maybe true or untrue, do not wash the stinking black mark on the forehead of NATO in my country. They have created the biggest human catastrophe in the past three years in Afghanistan, and they are trying, by sponsoring mediators, literally. This is the number one lesson I have learned as a practitioner, as a policymaker, and as a decision-maker.
Lesson two: values and principles that were supposedly the foundation of Western civilization, particularly the United States’ civilization, evaporated overnight in the event that they saw immediately no immediate material interest in Afghans. The Biden administration injected 17 billion dollars to the Taliban in Afghanistan to assist them to consolidate the worst, most cruel, and inhumane clerical dictatorship Afghanistan has ever experienced. Why? Because the system based on values has become more expensive and more difficult to sustain, and thus, it was sold. By the way, I may sound angry; trust me, I am not. I am not a conformist to the frames of legacy media, I don’t want to be politically correct, and I don’t want to be in line with politically correct politicians as well, and I have no fear to express what is boiling in my chest.
Post-2021, statements from Blinken, from Thomas West, from Karen Decker, from this and that, all they were trying to do was to shield themselves behind this excuse that they were doing everything good, and only a man in his late 70s by the name of Ashraf Ghani was guilty. Ashraf Ghani was not guilty; his only guilt was over-trusting the United States. He should not have trusted the United States; he should have received with an open heart and welcomed the offer of the regional countries. We paid a massive price for our alliance with NATO, and what is now the fate of Ashraf then?
There are no values, there are no principles; what is there is a very naked interest. That naked interest can sometimes be secured with an alliance through aligns with terrorists, it can be secured through aligns with dictatorships, it can be secured through an alliance with religious fanatics. So, my advice to the Afghan people, particularly those who are fighting the Taliban, is we should also search for our own interest, and we should not believe blindly in such promises and slogans.
Lesson three: none of our neighbors are bad; they are our neighbors. They exist here, they existed, they didn’t leave. For over 20 years, we were lectured on how our neighbors were bad. And then what happened? When the United States of America left, tens of thousands of American-trained Afghan forces found refuge where? In the very soil of our neighbors. Some of these neighbors smile at us jokingly; it’s a tragedy-comedy. They say, “Where is the West? The West has gone thousands and thousands of miles away from its promises, both physically, morally, and politically.” Every single word the Russian political commentators and experts have been saying about Afghanistan, especially post-2011, has been proven true. President Putin has been saying that these people will backstab you, they will not stay, and when they leave, they will not say we are leaving; they will blame you for leaving. He was right. Our other neighbors were right too. They were saying the same, but we said, “How come the mightiest military alliance defending the living civilization of our time can lie to a poor nation called Afghanistan?” And they did.
Lesson four: as far as the specific interest of the anti-Taliban block is concerned, or the anti-Taliban constituency is concerned, we should not have given our arms to the DDR. We were demobilized, we were disarmed, we were never reintegrated. We were not integrated because it was not in the interest of the corporations, particularly the private security companies, particularly the prime maintenance companies, particularly the prime construction companies, to reintegrate us. They were with people of their own image. So, I give you an example: there was a company in Afghanistan operating by the name of Neo Lemon. They were charging the system; they were charging the system up to three billion dollars for the maintenance of the vehicles of the Afghan security forces. And in 2021, before the collapse of the republic, they came to us; they said, “We can do the same contract with you for less than three hundred million dollars.” We approached the Americans. We said, “This company, which you will pay three billion dollars a year, is ready to do the same amount of work for us for three hundred million dollars.” They said, “We are not going to pay you the three hundred million dollars.” We asked Neo Lemon why they are refusing to pay ten percent of what they were paying to you directly. And the reply was very simple: “If they financed this contract for three hundred million dollars, then the question will be, where was the two point seven billion dollars going in the last twenty years or less?”
So, why are they blaming us for corruption? Why? There is a very famous quote from Senator John McCain, a distinguished American. He met our ambassador Sayed Tayyab Jawad. Sayed Tayyab Jawad told him, “Honorable Senator or Congressman, from each dollar you gave to Afghanistan, eighty cents come back to Washington.” He says, “What’s wrong with that? That’s our own dollars.” Exactly. It was United States dollars. They have every right to do what to do with it. I’m requesting them to respect us as a nation. Do not call us corrupt. We are not corrupt. What we have inherited, as I say, the largest legacy we have is the graves of our dear ones. It hurts. The backstabbing is one thing, but this poison of tongue is another thing that is hurting us.
Some of you may say, “Was it all about the United States? Where were the Afghan leaders? What were they doing?” It was a colossal failure. I’m going to come today to the responsibilities of the Afghan leaders, including myself. The Doha agreement was not for a peace process; it was a contract between Washington and the Taliban to recruit the Taliban as instruments of foreign policy, regardless of the cruelty or the cost, to pursue geopolitical aims with non-democratic, non-transparent tools and instruments. These weekly cash shipments, despite the rhetoric of the Trump White House, are continuing. I have evidence that it is continuing. There is a simple question: why are they giving between $45 to $60 million to the Taliban? We all know that such cash assistance does not alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people. It hasn’t stopped migration. It hasn’t created jobs. It has consolidated the religious tribal dictatorship of the Taliban.
What is happening now? A myth has been created that there is no alternative to the Taliban rule. This is a very harsh insult to the human soul. Let me repeat it again: this is the harshest insult to the human soul. It is the most racist insult the legacy media, policymakers, commentators, and diplomats, especially from Western countries, are throwing at the people of Afghanistan. It is like degrading Afghans and Afghanistan to a human zoo. When you are saying there is no alternative to the Taliban, you are literally telling us that your destiny of the 20 years of our intervention is reduced to a human zoo. That is what is happening in Afghanistan in 2025.
I quoted Lisa Curtis. We did not fail. The largest military alliance on the face of the Earth presented my country like a birthday cake to the Taliban. That is the testimony of the American officials themselves. Doha was not a peace process; it was a conspiracy. In 2021, to the date of the collapse, the American military did not assist us to do operations in the North because the conspiracy was to allow the entire country to fall at the hands of the Taliban. When we defied the code of partnership with them, and we sent our commanders to Faryab province, 38 of our commanders were killed in less than one hour because General Miller refused to provide them air support. It was a month before the collapse of the republic. I accompanied President Ashraf Ghani to the White House. Every single word that Biden said was a lie, every single word the CIA director said was a lie, every single word Lloyd Austin told us was a lie. I asked them three questions.
Question 1: “Why is every single logistical contract coming to an end on September 1st, 2021, and you are not renewing it?” They said, “We will answer this at the technical level, maybe back when you are in Afghanistan.”
Question 2: “Every sign we see, the Doha process is more of a process of regime change; it doesn’t seem like a peace process. Biden said, ‘We stand with you, we are with you. We will not go ahead, we will defend the Afghan republic, and we will make sure there is peace, not a unilateral takeover by the Taliban.’” This was a lie.
I also asked Austin when I was accompanying Dr. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani to the Pentagon; we said, “This is what the Taliban are doing. Does it mean you have ceased supporting the Afghan forces and actually you are assisting them instead?” They said, “We are going to send a technical mission to Kabul, and this technical mission will work with you on the details and make sure the capital region is defended until an intra-Afghan settlement is reached.” This was a lie because, in the secret annexes of the Doha agreement, actually, the United States committed that they will not assist the Afghan forces. And they also refused to say ANDSF; it is written, “the forces of the other side.” That is the magnitude of the betrayal and backstabbing.
Now, what is the situation right now? The situation right now is strategic ambiguity. It’s a calculated strategic ambiguity. The lack of clarity and major international stakeholders are deliberately reinforcing this ambiguity because the clarity is frightening; the clarity is what I am telling you, and it is frightening. It is dangerous; it involves risk. They know there is a snake in the kitchen, but they hope it will go away by itself.
We own that kitchen, and they have left the snake in our kitchen. Hope is not a plan. Hope is not a dream. Hope is not a strategy. That is why, despite the odds, despite the risks, despite the risk of even talking, we have not given up because we own the country, and we believe that the Doha conspiracy was designed to take it away from us for very malign geopolitical aims. If those geopolitical aims are not malign, my question is repeated again: the Taliban receive up to $60 million a week for what? UNAMA has spent $700 million since August 2021 to achieve what? To reinforce the strategic ambiguity, to reinforce the clouds, to reinforce the lack of clarity. It is not to bring clarity.
What is the meaning of clarity? The meaning of clarity and the removal of the ambiguity will be the following:
First, Afghanistan cannot be dominated either by an outside power, covertly or overtly, or by any single ethnic group in Afghanistan. The Pashtuns are not Taliban. The overwhelming majority of the Pashtuns are not the Taliban, but the Taliban are Pashtuns, particularly from the south. And 93% of the Taliban structure, regardless of where they are, is from one tribal group in Afghanistan. The United States doesn’t want you to know this. The architects of the Doha deal do not want you to know this. They never mention the name of Hibatullah in their statements. Why? If they have a problem with North Korea, they say, “The regime of Kim Jong-un,” or they have a problem with another country, they refer to that person in order to tell a society, “We have a problem with this person.”
Why is Washington refraining from naming Hibatullah as the super evil of our times in Afghanistan? Why? Has Washington put in place any mechanism to make sure that part of these tens of millions of dollars do not reach Hibatullah every week? No, it hasn’t. Let’s remember, if the ICC has chased Hibatullah, at least on paper, the ICC is a European entity. It doesn’t have the backing of Washington, and it has no teeth either.
So, clarity number one is: my country is dominated through a NATO-backed conspiracy by a religious tribal group, and it is going to collapse. The U.S. is funding it right now, and we hope it will stop. It has not stopped to this date.
Second, the Taliban’s religious tribal power structure relies on two factors: madrassa affiliation and rural tribal codes. Both of these codes are alien to the absolute majority of the Afghan people. It is unsustainable. UNAMA, despite spending $700 million and despite having 51 foreign expatriates in its structure, has zero impact on the behavior of the Taliban. After the conference in Doha, the Taliban brought about the PVPV law, Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, exactly a day after Doha 3. This was to tell you, “UNAMA, you are irrelevant. You are a show.” And when members of the Security Council extend the mandate of UNAMA, it’s a waste of resources; it’s a waste of every effort. It has no relevance in Afghanistan today.
Every ingredient of a massive civil war is in there. Our advice for foreign powers will be not to invest in the cheap Taliban crypto. I want to repeat: do not fall for this cheap Taliban crypto. It will collapse because it is alien to the very fabric of Afghanistan. It does not represent the ethnic groups. It does not represent the political diversity. It has not come through a process. It has come through a conspiracy and a deal. Every ingredient is there for this entity to collapse, and if it doesn’t go by itself, a civil war is on the way, whether you like it or not. Give the Afghan people a face. Do not reduce our cause to women’s education only. I appreciate your sentiments, but the issue in Afghanistan is not the education of women only. It is a massive human suffering, regardless of gender.
Now, as far as the region is concerned, the region must have the strategic courage to come up with its own formula and to get rid of this strategic ambiguity. The region should not wait for NATO version 2 to have a prescription. NATO has no prescription. The prescription of NATO is what we are seeing: an ongoing ambiguity that is costing the Afghans dearly and massively and that is costing the region in a lot of ways, which I do not want to articulate. Some of our neighbors, despite our evidence, despite our requests, despite our decades-long plea not to assist the Taliban, assisted the Taliban, gave them bases, gave them snipers, gave them bombs, gave them training. And you know what? The Taliban are now getting more assistance from Washington than those countries can. They should ask themselves, “What has changed? What has changed?” And still, if these countries believe that the solution is with the Taliban, the solution is not with the Taliban.
As far as the region is concerned, the Afghans are concerned, as far as various regions of Afghanistan are concerned, today there is a notion that the fighting spirit has died in the midst of Afghans, and the spirit of fighting is only alive with the Taliban. That is a myth that was reinforced by the injection of billions of dollars and the deliberate handover of Afghanistan, in the words of Lisa Curtis, as a birthday cake by NATO through the deal to this group. This is very unnatural, and it is going to end.
Question and Answers Session
Geopolitical Implications of the TAPI Gas Pipeline: Taliban Revenue, Regional Power Dynamics, and China’s Role
Question: “Since 1996, Turkmenistan’s involvement extended last September. Should Afghanistan follow this timeline, akin to Palestine’s, India and Pakistan would purchase gas, generating $2 billion or $8 million annually for the Taliban regime. This could indirectly bolster the regime, with China’s support, despite India’s losses compared to Pakistan, empowering the Taliban with additional revenue to sustain its political actions. What are your thoughts on this?”
Afghanistan was offered a chance. It was offered a hand of assistance, and the hand of assistance was called the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA). The United States told us, “This agreement is not against your neighbors. It’s a legal framework that allows us to assist you.” We didn’t know that legal framework was actually a paper for deception. Nobody talks about it. In that document, there is a clause that if the United States wants to withdraw from Afghanistan, they should negotiate with the Afghan government. Instead, they negotiated with our enemies. Not only did they negotiate, but they also directly threatened us not to hold elections. Remember the elections? They directly threatened us not to hold elections. They bribed our election commission not to count the votes. And when the votes were counted, they bribed the political class of Afghanistan to be fragmented in order not to create a unified negotiating team. If the USAID papers from Afghanistan are inspected today, you will find out that they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on creating a fake, superficial political class. They bypassed the Afghan government. Afghanistan was poor and is poor. And they used this money not to help us but to divide us. Therefore, the fact that the republic did not have a strong negotiating table was because the United States did not want us to have a strong negotiating team. Every time Khalilzad would come to Kabul, he would meet four or five politicians before meeting the president. And he would send his message directly to the media, what he would say.
It is an oversimplification to say that this enterprise, which started in 2001 after 9/11, was actually spoiled by Ashraf Ghani. If this is the judgment of the strategists, I am afraid to say this is the most foolish judgment. It is the most foolish judgment to say that Ashraf Ghani spoiled the effort of NATO in Afghanistan and brought about the collapse. That is the simplification. That is for the masses so that they digest the simple story. In fact, from 2018 onwards, effectively, Khalilzad was negotiating with the Taliban to recruit them and hand Afghanistan over to this group for geopolitical purposes. What are those geopolitical purposes? I am not interested in speculating. But I have evidence that this is for geopolitical purposes. If it is not for geopolitical purposes, if Afghanistan has no regime, no government, no law, no regulation, no judiciary, no parliament, no elections, why are they giving $60 million a week? Why do they come out publicly almost twice a month saying, “We do not want to support the opposition of the Taliban”? Why? Why are they telling people there is no alternative to the Taliban rule, and they want to imply that this human zoo they have created in Afghanistan is an acceptable new norm?
So, neutrality was, is, and remains a good thing; the neutrality was not violated by Afghanistan. Again, we trusted this offer. We signed Strategic Partnership Agreements with almost every single Western nation. Where are those papers? We are weak; we cannot take you to any court. We are not strong enough to fly that fact in the face of the Western nations. But is that how a leading civilization wants to gain credibility? Of course not. Now, on the issue of TAPI, Khalilzad was the lobbyist for the Taliban in the 90s. Khalilzad was the lobbyist for the Taliban post-9/11. Khalilzad remains a Taliban loyalist today. Was his appointment as chief negotiator a coincidence, part of a design, or maybe both? But he never represented the United States the way it should have been represented. If we had a one-hour meeting with him, for 20 minutes he would be a Pashtun nationalist, for 20 minutes he would be a U.S. ambassador, for 20 minutes he would be an international mediator, etc. He carried multiple hats. He carried multiple hats. So, that is the reality.
What should be the future of Afghanistan? We have a score to settle with the Taliban. It’s too early now to say what our future should be. We have to first get rid of them and free our land, free our people. If you look at the composition of the Taliban, and if you look at how many migrants there are, or if you look at how many people they have jailed, if you look at what they do in cities and areas where they are not welcome, that was reflected in the Western media.
Envisioning Afghanistan’s Future: Strategies to Overcome the Taliban Regime
Question: What is the next step to challenge the Taliban regime? How can we initiate change to bring it down? Should it start internally or externally? Are the Taliban divided? What is the first move, and do you have a strategy?
It’s not about a matter of bitterness or sweetness; it’s a matter of conformity with the lie or nonconformity with the prevalent narrative. The prevalent narrative is based on deception, lies, and the Doha deal conspiracy. Somebody has to break it up. Somebody has to open this body and expose it, and I’m glad that I’m exposing it. Now, as to the strategy of what should be done to get rid of this situation, let’s split our tasks so that we understand who should do what, at least what I should do and what our expectations are from Western civilization.
We request that Western civilization, the Western press, and the Western consciousness not place unnecessary blame on the Afghans. Stop it. That’s a big contribution to our cause.
What is terrorism? Is terrorism a guy, an angry person, killing two Americans in the streets of New York or, God forbid, in the streets of Paris? It shouldn’t happen. But do you know that we are now ruled by terrorists? Why are you not mentioning it? I’m not talking to you as a person. The West is now dividing human life into several categories. And if I want to quote, there is this “golden billion” and the non-golden—the dirt that remains. So, it has become a norm that if we die, we are not counted. Our sacrifices are not counted. Our commitment is not counted. Our wisdom is not counted. Our dedication is not counted. What is counted is if you go to most of these meetings, and they say, “What is the threat from Afghanistan against us?” Nobody says, “We had a commitment there. We had agreements with the Afghan people. We have lifted them.” We do not go there, but at least we should have the dignity to say, “It’s our fault.”
Don’t whitewash the Taliban. Every time a Norwegian diplomat comes out and talks positively about the Taliban, I sweat. If Norway takes 20 Taliban to a hotel in their capital and leaves them there for six months, there will be protests, there will be protests. Do not whitewash the Taliban; explain them as they are. This whitewashing is a sponsored whitewash; it’s not genuine, it’s not authentic. Do not say you do not support the anti-Taliban. At least remain neutral. Give us the right to express ourselves in whatever form and way that is effective to liberate our country. When you, as the largest military, political, and economic bloc in the world, come out and say there is no alternative to Taliban rule, do you know the psychological impact of that on the minds of 20 million Afghan men and women? No, you cannot even imagine it.
Use the United Nations as the most effective platform to mobilize the world of the weak against this situation. Don’t be conformist.
Give us political support. What you are doing today is political support; give us more space. Conditionalize your humanitarian assistance; do not go there and provide assistance without having access to society. Western NGOs have no access to society; they are injecting aid into the darkness. Why are you doing this? Stop it. You think you are alleviating the suffering of the Afghan people? No, you are not. Your NGOs, calculably or uncalculatedly, are assisting the Taliban. Stop it. The human tragedy has already happened.
And lastly, what will bring us back to your attention? Another tragedy, another, God forbid, surprise, another bad behavior? Again, I am appealing to you: the West is still the most dominant bloc in the world, but it is not taking its responsibility seriously. It is bypassing its responsibility, and that bypassing of your responsibility is not only a disservice to Western civilization, it is also a disservice to the rest of humanity. You dominate global institutions, and you are not using those institutions to raise awareness about the Afghan people. That is what you can do. Leave the rest to us. There is enough domestic motivation to topple the Taliban. They are not natural to our life, our social fabric, or our being. We will talk to them. We want the West to remain neutral, not to side, one way or another, with the Taliban. We want the West to remain neutral, not to side.
From 40 Years of War to a Strategy for Peace: Defining Afghanistan’s Path Forward
Question: If you want to win a war, you need a peace strategy. If not, you lose a war. What is your peace strategy?
Fighting and killing humans is ugly, but it is not our choice. Let me simplify it. We want to study what is good for us, as people. There is one man with his militia; he thinks he knows more than any of us, and he decides what we should spend. We would like to choose the color for our dress. He thinks we are incapable of choosing the color of our dress, and he has to choose it. We think on March 21 every year, we should go to nature and eat some dry fruits, and he thinks that is against the Quran. We would like our daughters to be doctors, engineers, nurses, lawyers, economists, tutors, etc. And he thinks that he is in communication with God, and he thinks our daughters and sisters are a quarter of a human being, and they lack 75% of the dignity of a human being. We would like to live like normal human beings, and this man and his militia believe that the rest of the world is abnormal, and what he is doing is normal. We think Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic country, and they should have a say in their destiny. He believes, except for his tribe and, from his tribe, a few people, the rest of the Afghans lack the wisdom to have a say in their destiny. The list goes on and on and on. Can you put yourself in our shoes and find a way to negotiate with this man, and if he has, through which way? He has left us no option, and he has left us no option because he believes the West has consolidated his power and is still consolidating his power.
When Western diplomats come out and say there is no alternative to this cruelty, and it is the best new normal for Afghanistan, can you imagine the impacts of that on Afghan society and on the spirit of the Taliban? Of course not. It is not the Afghan people heading toward civil war. They are being pushed toward civil war. There is already a civil war going on, but it is not intense. The intensity is very low, but there is a civil war going on. Send the ICRC, a noble Western agency, to report to you: who are these 40,000+ prisoners in the Taliban? Who are they? Why, in 2025, does an Afghan man get four years’ jail time just because he liked an anti-Hibatullah Facebook post?
Life under the Taliban has lost meaning for the bulk of their people. They are exploding, and that explosion is inevitably called civil war. What is left for us as an option, as a peaceful option? Not much. Because the peaceful option was the implementation of the peace process, which had started in Doha, and it turned out that it was not a peace process. It was a scheme of a map for regime change backed by the United States, militarily, diplomatically, and financially.
Navigating Decision-Making in Crisis: Reflections on Afghanistan’s Challenges
Question: how do you manage to make a decision?
You are deprived of the very basics of life. If you are simply being a human being and having a normal life, if that dream is taken away from you, then you ask yourself a question: What is the purpose of life? It is not us choosing to fight. We are left with no option. The notion that the Taliban cannot be challenged militarily is a myth. It is part of the Doha deal conspiracy. Americans did not come to Afghanistan to defeat them. This is not my word. Henry Crumpton, a CIA officer, spoke to the war commission and Congress. He said, “We were not there to defeat the Taliban.”
Obama said, “We want to defeat the Taliban, but if we can’t defeat them in one year, we go.” With all due respect for President Obama’s intellect, militarily, that is the most incorrect, I am sorry to say, the most foolish statement for a military strategy. “I warn my enemy: I am only here for a year. If I cannot find you in that year, I will go.” And then his military commander on the ground, General McChrystal, what did he do? He massed 20,000 troops to attack Marjah. What was in Marjah? Nothing. I told McChrystal, I said, “There is nothing in Marjah. You are going into a desert town with a few thousand people; there will be no Taliban.” The Taliban will not effectively challenge militarily. That is a myth. And if the West doesn’t want the Afghan people to rise up and fight, they should stand with the Afghan people and help them gain their rights, very basic rights, through peaceful means. We are not demanding Jeffersonian democracy. We are not demanding a liberal order. We are demanding the right to education. We are demanding the right to be able to walk in nature. We are demanding the right to choose the education for our children. That is taken from us.
Envisioning Peace and Civilization in Afghanistan: A Strategy Beyond Taliban Conflict
Question: What is our strategy for peace and civilization, rather than focusing on the Taliban’s negativity and the reasons for its conflict?
The most recognizable, easily understandable peace plan is a national constitution. A national process for a constitutional order must be started, and the West should back it. It should mandate the UN, under the United Nations, to consult the Afghans on a constitutional process. The word “constitution” is universally accepted. The constitutional process is a universally recognized, legitimate process. It can lead us to stability. It can lead Afghanistan to domestic legitimacy, national legitimacy, and the reintegration of Afghanistan into the global fabric of other governments. I think we do not need a factional peace process. We do not need factional formulas. We need a national process to lead us to accept each other, respect each other, and live under one umbrella, one ceiling. The only ceiling that can bring us together is a constitution. Afghanistan has no constitution today. When I refer to the constitution, I do not necessarily ask for the reinstitution of the republic’s constitution, although it was a very good constitution. We need a constitution. For those who claim that the Taliban have majority acceptance or think the ethnic group of the Taliban is the majority, why not have a constitution? When you ask the Taliban for a constitution, they deflect you to Sharia law. Sharia law is not a book. There is no book called Sharia law. Sharia law is a series of references from multiple sources in an enormous number of books. It depends on which person’s understanding of Sharia law is what. For example, you recently heard that the Taliban believe that the Salafi Sharia law, which has a big following in eastern Afghanistan, is dubious. It is invalid. The Taliban believe that the Shia Sharia law is infidel, It is not Islam. The Taliban believe that Ismailis are non-believers. They worship the same Allah. They accept the same Prophet as the Prophet. But in the eyes of the Taliban, they are non-believers. They have to be taxed more.
When it comes to the issue of minority vis-à-vis the majority, I think in 2025, subjecting a minority to the tribal code of a supposed majority is not humane. Although in Afghanistan, statistics are not known. Who is the majority? Who is the minority? We don’t know. The last time Afghanistan had a scientific census was in 1974 or 1975. I was probably two or three years old. Since then, we haven’t had a census. As I said, if the Taliban held elections tomorrow in Jalalabad, they would lose. They would lose in Herat. They would lose in the districts of Herat. They would lose in Kandahar. If not in rural and urban Kandahar, they would lose. They would lose in the great Paktia region. That’s why they are anti-elections. They are anti-constitution. Let’s not turn the situation into an accepted new normal for Afghanistan. It is not accepted. Why have 8 million people left their homes? Why do people risk their lives? Technocrats and educated Afghans pay their life earnings to cross the Mediterranean to reach the shores of Europe. Why? Because there is no hope. Hope has been taken away from them.
The engagement with the Taliban is a dead initiative. At the rate of 17 billion dollars, has that stopped migration? Has that stopped massacres of the Afghan people? Has that brought any stability to the situation? Has that created any clarity? No. The more money you pump into Afghanistan, there is a great American saying: “Whenever you cut your loss, it’s good.” The injection of money into the Taliban system, hoping that it will reform, hoping that it will improve, hoping that it will see women as human beings, it will not happen. I’m deliberately not concentrating on terrorism. Terrorism is mostly a Western agenda. We did integrate our agenda into counterterrorism. What happened at the end? The United States literally bribed the biggest terrorist group and delisted them from the blacklist. It’s easy to say that Russians removed the Taliban from the list of terrorists. The United States removed them from the list of terrorists in 2011, practically. In 2011, Barnett Rubin reached out to the Taliban immediately after the killing of bin Laden, and they started negotiating behind the Afghan government’s back. Let’s remember that the Taliban had headquarters in Quetta, Karachi, Waziristan, and Peshawar. And the United States was paying billions of dollars to Pakistan for what? For passing their territory to reach Afghanistan for logistics. They never tackled the issue of sanctuaries in Pakistan. It’s easy to magnify the mistakes of others and not be so reflective and not stand in front of them.
I can give you concrete examples of how European countries, in order to avoid terrorist attacks, used to pay bribes to Taliban commanders. Governor Azizi, now an ambassador there, knows exactly in the Shindand area which European country was paying which Taliban commander to avoid getting attacked. These security companies were spending more than they had in security forces, and they were paying part of that to the Taliban to pass through their territory safely. Those who say, “Without the Taliban,” but at the end, military victory was not feasible, this is nonsense. The Taliban were not fought. As far as the Afghan army is concerned, until 2009, an Afghan army did not exist. Some battalions existed. An Afghan army did not exist because it was not in the interest of the private security companies to allow an Afghan army to come up and assume responsibility. The counterargument will be, “It was our army, it was our decision.” Fine. But let’s put the facts as they are.
And now, as far as the access of NGOs to the situation is concerned, NGOs do not have access. They are going through the filter of the Taliban, and that is a massive violation of the principles of being an NGO. The NGOs employ up to 80,000 Afghans. All of them have been vetted by the Taliban. Independent Afghans cannot find employment in these NGOs. So, the money you are sending in the name of humanitarian assistance is consolidating the Taliban. Now, some countries were hopeful that this new enterprise, the Taliban, would bring security benefits, strategic benefits, and economic benefits. Some have been disappointed; others have gained more than leverage. The peace plan we are advocating is very simple: a constitutional process. All ethnic groups should be given a choice to have a say in what type of constitution they want. Do we want a Talibanized constitution if it comes through the vote of the people? Why not? Do we want a certain type of state destruction if it comes through the voice of the people? Why not? But if you say the Afghans lack the wisdom to start a constitutional process, that is another insult. Afghans have a tradition of how to make constitutions. In the past hundred years, we had constitutions. We had constitutions in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, all through turbulent times. Twice in our history, we had no constitution: the first Taliban and the second Taliban. Why is the world not asking for a constitution? Why is UNAMA trying to zigzag its way to appease the Taliban instead of mentioning the word “constitution”? Because major powers are not interested in a constitution. The victimization of Afghans for malign geopolitical purposes is still a game. That is what we want to end, right away.
Is the Taliban a popular movement? Where? Where are they popular? Wherever they are popular, they should win the vote. I am not advocating for killing all the Taliban. I have never advocated for killing every Taliban. Find a single interview of me asking that every Taliban should be eliminated. I have said, “If they are part of Afghan society, then they should be part of Afghan society, not the owner of Afghan society.” We should not be condemned as the subject of the Taliban, which we will never accept, and we have not accepted. If our strength is judged because we are not able to bomb civilians, we are not able to bomb hotels, we are not able to kidnap tourists, that is why people think we are weak. It is a different criterion for judging strength. Is the West rewarding a group that can only kill tourists, NGOs, educators, doctors, and civilians? Would you like us to choose that path in order to become relevant and a recipient of more money? I hope not.
Therefore, we appeal that, you know, France is a member of the Security Council. We should say, “Constitution.” Europe has massive political weight. Next time they attend the Doha conference, UNAMA has borrowed a stupid term from Trump called “Mosaic.” It is how to engage civil society and bring NGOs. Why not use a simple word that can hold meaning for every Afghan, Constitution. Why are you just trying to shy away from pronouncing the word “Constitution”? That is the best peace plan.
My message to the European countries is: please stop your NGOs working with the Taliban because your NGOs have no access to the Afghan people. Their money, in the name of humanitarian assistance, is consolidating the Taliban. The money is not reaching the Afghan people. That is my second message. And my third message is: let us give a human face to the people of Afghanistan. The issue is not the education of women only. The issue is a massive human tragedy. And this tragedy is somehow sugar-coated, covered up by the Doha Peace Agreement between the Taliban and the United States. The agreement is now the root of the evil that is going on post-2021. It has to be dismantled, and a new process in which the constitution should be the central word has to start, and Europe can assist a lot. And I also request the European media not to be conformist. The European media has massive intellect. They should dig into it. The Taliban did not win the war. The Afghan army did not lose. Something happened. What was it? Why are they not talking about it? Why are they not asking Washington? Why did they remove Haqqani from the terrorist list? Why was he on the terrorist list? Why did they arrest Bashir Noorzai and convict him for lifetime imprisonment? And then they released him? Why? Why is every Guantanamo detainee holding a senior position? Was Guantanamo a training center or a jail? I do not see any sign of suffering in these people. They are in good health. What was going on there?
Gratitude Message
Dear Organizers and Participants,
I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all who contributed to the success of the recent conference hosted by the Paris Academy of Geopolitics and the Geopragma Institute on April 22, 2025. In an era when global attention to Afghanistan’s challenges is often overshadowed, your commitment to fostering critical dialogue on its political, humanitarian, and geopolitical issues is truly commendable.
I would like to express my special thanks to the organizers, particularly Dr. Caroline Galactéros, Madame Patricia Lalonde, Mr. Armen Sarkissian, Mr. Gérard Chesnel, Colonel Alain Corvez, and Mr. Reza Jafari, for their tireless efforts in coordinating this impactful event. Your dedication provided a platform for meaningful discussions and amplified the voices of those advocating for Afghanistan’s future.
To all the distinguished speakers and attendees, thank you for your engagement and shared commitment to addressing the pressing issues facing Afghanistan. Your contributions inspire hope and reinforce the importance of collective action in pursuit of justice, dignity, and stability.
![[Notes-geopolitique] - « Jean-François Fiorina s’entretient avec Caroline Galactéros »](https://notes-geopolitiques.com/notesgeo/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CLESHS72-1.jpg "[Notes-geopolitique] - « Jean-François Fiorina s’entretient avec Caroline Galactéros »")
