Don't blame Afghanistan for blowing whistle on Zalmay Khalilzad

Hamdullah Mohib, national security adviser to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, broke diplomatic china on Thursday when he told a Washington audience:

“Knowing Ambassador Khalilzad’s own history, personal history, he has ambitions in Afghanistan. He has wanted to run for president twice, in 2009 and 2014… The perception in Afghanistan [was that] perhaps all of this talk is to create a caretaker government, of which he will then become the viceroy. We’re only saying this because this is the perception.”

For his comments, Mohib was summoned to the State Department to be chewed out by David Hale, the undersecretary of state for policy. He may no longer be able to get a U.S. visa, despite having an American wife. American diplomats defended the State Department’s action, saying that Mohib’s “ad hominem” attack had no place in diplomacy.