KABUL — Moderate Taliban figures have expressed interest in the fragile peace process, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Thursday, referring to a deal that appears even more elusive with this summer’s rash of suicide attacks and bombings.
Ryan Crocker, who is retiring a year earlier than expected, also said he thinks it is unlikely that the departure of most foreign troops by 2014 will plunge the country into another civil war or prompt a precipitous economic slide.
“I tend to consider those unlikely scenarios,” Crocker said in an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Crocker, a soft-spoken, gray-haired diplomat who became the civilian face of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said the international community has pledged support for Afghanistan post-2014. And he said minority ethnic political leaders seem more interested in positioning themselves in the next Afghan administration than bracing for a civil war like the one that led to the rise of the Taliban after the Soviet exit in 1989.
“Politics is breaking out all over,” he said of the uptick in political activity ahead of the Afghan presidential election in 2014. “You don’t see many signs of the people saying ‘Well, it’s time to start digging the trenches again.’ “
The ambassador acknowledged that northern Afghanistan has a lot of militias, but said he didn’t think they threatened national unity.
