Small Wars Journal

Ryan Crocker: The Taliban Will ‘Retake the Country’

Mon, 01/28/2019 - 6:09pm

Ryan Crocker: The Taliban Will ‘Retake the Country’ by Michael Hirsh - Foreign Policy

Ryan Crocker is one of America’s most respected and honored diplomats, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a foreign service career that spanned four decades, Crocker served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon. As a political attache, he survived the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut. In a conversation with Foreign Policy, Crocker discusses why he believes the Trump administration’s reported framework deal with the Taliban is a betrayal of the democratically elected Afghan government that Washington has spent nearly two decades propping up. He says it will leave the Taliban in control of Afghanistan—as the Islamist movement was when Osama bin Laden struck the United States in 2001…

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