Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker says the only option for the Afghanistan conflict is a political settlement.

In an in-studio interview with Fox News, Mr Crocker said:”Clearly you are not going to have a military victory to end this insurgency. It will have to be a political settlement. But the military can set the condition. Talking to the Taliban without the Afghan government in room I think was a huge mistake. I was against those talks right from the beginning.”

“If we were talking to the Taliban and the Afghan government is not involved, we are delegitimizing the government we have supported for years”, he added.

Elsewhere he went on saying that “we should never has entered into those negotiations. The president has put a stop to it. That’s good. Only to return to some kind of political process, but it will have to be on a very different basis. it will have to have the Afghan government upfront, if the Taliban won’t deal with that, then we are just gonna have to wait until they are ready to deal. We shouldn’t think we are losing this war. we are not and the Afghan government is not.”

Arezo New Website – Humayun Salimi