In a presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former US President Donald Trump defended his administration’s handling of the Doha agreement with the Taliban, saying it was terminated because the group failed to meet its obligations.
“We canceled the agreement because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” Trump said. “For 18 months, we had nobody killed. We had a very good agreement negotiated by Mike Pompeo. The reason it was good was that we were getting out [of Afghanistan]. We would have been out faster, but we wouldn’t have lost soldiers, left Americans behind, or abandoned $85 billion worth of new, beautiful military equipment.”
Trump criticized the Biden administration for what he described as the “worst withdrawal,” calling it “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.”
He linked this to broader international repercussions, claiming that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was prompted by the perceived incompetence of the Biden administration. “They saw how incompetent she [Harris] and her boss are,” he said.
The Doha agreement, signed on February 29, 2020, in Qatar’s capital, was negotiated between Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. special envoy, and Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. Mike Pompeo, then U.S. secretary of state, attended the signing ceremony.
The deal, which outlined a U.S. military withdrawal in exchange for Taliban security guarantees, has been a point of contention in U.S. politics, with both Trump and Biden administrations facing scrutiny for their roles in Afghanistan’s collapse and the chaotic evacuation that followed.
