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Fawzia Koofi was one of the few women politicians who faced the Taliban representatives in the peace talks before the Taliban captured the country. Koofi spoke up for the women of Afghanistan and their rights. Now that the Taliban are in power, she is not sure as to what her role would be, having already escaped assassination attempts, allegedly the by the people who have swept to power now.
Koofi has been vocal even under the Taliban. Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, she claimed that the US could have stopped all the chaos that broke loose soon after its departure announcement by delaying its exit by a month.
"President Biden could have delayed this to wait for a political settlement - for even just another month, just get the political settlement first. They could have come to a deal," Koofi told The Guardian.
The US signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020 when it pledged to withdraw the troops within 14 months. Although discussing the political roadmap for Afghanistan along with a ceasefire was part of the deal, the Taliban clearly flouted it once the US withdrawal was imminent. [https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf]
Koofi may have a point going by what some experts say. "Wars today are not won in a battle. They are bloody, ugly, complicated, messy things that kind of whimper away. They don't end with a switch… It's a dimmer switch — you have to turn it down slowly,” retired major-general David Fraser told CBC News. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institute, has also agreed that the events in Afghanistan could have played out very differently had the pullout been effected "on a more gradual and protracted basis." [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/afghanistan-biden-troops-withdrawal-1.6143848]
But Biden has defended the decision to sticking to the withdrawal deadline saying that the Afghans had enough time to prepare.[ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/us/politics/biden-afghanistan.html]
Read more:
What Koofi says?:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/19/afghanistan-delaying-us-exit-could-have-meant-peace-biden-taliban-fawzia-koofi
The backlash against Biden:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58224399
‘Biden botched’:
https://time.com/6090523/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban/