zalmay khalilzad

CNN is reporting that a “Western source close to the Afghan leadership” is saying talks for next week’s runoff election between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah have broken down and over the weekend Abdullah will drop out. Christiane Amanpour’s only other source in the piece is Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and [...]

So it used to be that the Obama administration wanted Ambassador Zal Khalilzad to be something like a CEO for Afghanistan, because, you know, who doesn’t trust the competence and wisdom of a CEO? Now the administration thinks ex-Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, who’s opposing President Hamid Karzai in the election on Aug. 20, should be [...]

In one of the most rococo arrangements between patron and client-state imaginable, Afghan President Hamid Karzai might hire Zalmay Khalilzad — who was an extremely powerful U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 — to be something like a chief executive officer. Khalilzad, who was born in Mazar-e-Sharif, had been rumored to consider a [...]

Here’s a rigorously reported piece on the history of the relationship between the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai — as you’ll see from the piece, we only have a U.S.-Afghan relationship as a derivative effect — from Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It suggests this must be a perplexing time for Karzai: he spent the last [...]

Bad news for those who don’t want Chris Hill to become the next ambassador to Iraq:
Also in Mr. Hill’s corner are three former Iraq ambassadors: Ryan C. Crocker, Zalmay Khalilzad and John D. Negroponte. The three wrote a letter supporting Mr. Hill for the post and urging the Senate to approve his nomination.