Senior Taliban figure Anas Haqqani says the group originally intended to enter Kabul in 2021 through a negotiated arrangement with the then-government to preserve international legitimacy.
However, he said, the Taliban was forced to take the city after former president Ashraf Ghani abruptly left the country.
In an interview with a Taliban-run radio station in Kabul, Haqqani said the group had long known the United States would withdraw from Afghanistan. He claimed the plan was to enter the capital “through mutual understanding” so that relations with the world would remain normal, but that strategy failed when news arrived that Ghani had departed Kabul.
Haqqani said that during the Doha talks between the Taliban and the US, the group realised Washington was determined to leave but would not say so publicly. The Ghani government, meanwhile, insisted it was being sidelined in the negotiations and believed US forces would remain.
According to Haqqani, Taliban leaders had expected a transfer of power and sought to keep government institutions functioning, maintain order, and prevent looting by agreeing an orderly entry into Kabul. “We knew the Americans would definitely leave… We understood the situation and recognised the necessity,” he said.
He noted that he refers to Ghani’s departure as “left” rather than “fled” and still calls him “Dr. Ghani” an unusually respectful tone among Taliban leaders.
Speaking about the Doha process, Haqqani said the Taliban negotiating team’s priority was to sign an agreement with the US “in front of the world”, which he described as “the signing of America’s defeat,” though Western governments referred to it as a peace deal.
Once intra-Afghan talks began, he said, Taliban negotiators lost hope of progress. He claimed the Kabul delegation aimed to delay talks until Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump, at which point they would cancel the agreement. “Talks with the Afghan team were pointless, so we decided to hold only symbolic meetings,” he said.
Haqqani’s comments come ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power. Many Afghan politicians argue that the key to peace was an intra-Afghan agreement, but in Doha the US signed a deal directly with the Taliban without securing consensus among Afghan factions, paving the way for the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Anas Haqqani, the half-brother of Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, was arrested by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security in 2014 and freed in 2019 in exchange for two American professors. He joined the Taliban’s Doha negotiating team soon after. Although he has never held a senior official post in the Taliban administration, he remains influential in decision-making circles.
Following the Doha deal, the Taliban seized power in August 2021 and imposed sweeping restrictions: banning political activities and parties, censoring media, closing schools and universities to girls and women, barring women from political participation, and even prohibiting them from visiting amusement parks and public spaces.
The group has staffed top government posts exclusively with clerics, prompting many skilled professionals to flee. Due to these policies, and no country except Russia has formally recognised the Taliban government.
