Former US envoy says Washington should have pursued early Taliban negotiations after 9/11

A former policymaker reassesses the post-attack choices

Former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has used the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks to argue that Washington should have considered bringing the Taliban into an Afghan political process much earlier. In a new Al Jazeera interview, Khalilzad also said the intelligence and analysis used to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq were problematic. His comments constitute a retrospective assessment, not a change in current US policy, but they come from an official who helped shape both theatres.

Khalilzad was serving on the National Security Council when al-Qaeda’s attacks killed 2,977 people in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He later became the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, and ultimately served as Washington’s special representative for Afghan reconciliation. That trajectory placed him inside the initial military response and the much later negotiations intended to end America’s longest war.

Afghanistan’s missed negotiating window

Khalilzad’s central argument is that anger, urgency and confidence in US power narrowed the range of options considered in late 2001. He said an effort to include the Taliban in a political settlement could have been useful, rather than treating prolonged military defeat as the only route. The United States invaded Afghanistan less than a month after the attacks to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government that had sheltered its leadership.

The conflict continued for almost 20 years. During Donald Trump’s first term, Khalilzad led negotiations that produced the 2020 Doha agreement with the Taliban and a timetable for withdrawing US forces. The withdrawal was completed under President Joe Biden in 2021, after which the Taliban rapidly returned to national power. Khalilzad defended the decision to leave, arguing that the original counterterrorism mission and wider strategic priorities had changed.

Iraq and the cost of faulty assumptions

On Iraq, Khalilzad linked the invasion to the atmosphere created by September 11 and to assessments that Saddam Hussein might possess weapons of mass destruction. No such stockpiles were found. His account suggests that fear of another surprise attack helped turn a policy of containment into regime change. It does not resolve the long-running dispute over responsibility, but it adds a first-person assessment from a senior participant in the Bush administration.

The anniversary has also produced sharply different official framing. The White House proclamation emphasised national unity, military service and continued vigilance, while Britain told the UN Security Council that remembrance must be paired with lawful, effective counterterrorism and attention to conditions that enable extremist recruitment. What to watch is whether Khalilzad’s critique informs current debates over the use of force, negotiated settlements and clear political end states, particularly as Washington manages new conflicts without repeating open-ended interventions.