Hamdullah Mohib

In 2014, the same year he received his Ph.D., Mohib became an aide to Ghani, who won the 2014 Afghan presidential election. After Ghani assumed office, Mohib became his deputy chief of staff; one year later, Ghani was appointed Afghan ambassador to the United States. Mohib was just 32 years old and had no prior diplomatic experience.[1] Mohib also simultaneously served as non-resident ambassador to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, and Colombia.[5]

Mohib formally presented his credentials as Afghan Ambassador to the United States to U.S. President Barack Obama in September 2015.[1]

As Ambassador, Mohib emphasized the need to strengthen the U.S.-Afghan partnership on shared areas of interest, including economic development, anti-corruption efforts, and counterterrorism.[6]

In August 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani appointed Mohib to the post of national security adviser after Mohammad Hanif Atmar resigned from that post. At the same time, Ghani declined to accept offers to resignation submitted by Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami, Interior Minister Wais Barmak, and National Directorate of Security chief Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai, over policy differences; Ghani asked the trio to remain in office.[7]

As national security adviser, Mohib conveyed the Ghani administration's frustration and anger at the Trump administration's choice to cut out the Afghan government from direct U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations,[8] a reversal of the prior longstanding U.S. policy of refusing to negotiate with the Taliban without the participation of the Afghan government.[9] (The Taliban views the Kabul government as a "puppet regime"[9] that is illegitimate[10] and therefore refuses to directly negotiate with it.[10]). In a March 2019 conference in Washington, D.C., Mohib accused Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, of "delegitimizing" the Afghan government in Kabul by excluding it from peace negotiations in Doha, Qatar, in which Khalilzad is the leading U.S. negotiator.[8][9][10][11] Mohib accused Khalilzad, who unsuccessfully ran for president of Afghanistan in 2009 and 2014, of seeking to become a "viceroy" and being motivated by personal political ambition.[10][11] Reuters reported that the day following Mohib's remarks, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale informed President Ghani in a phone call that the U.S. government would cut ties with Mohib, and that he would no longer be officially received in Washington or by U.S. civilian and military officials.[10] Mohib was subsequently shunned by U.S. diplomats who walked out of meetings or refused to attend meetings with Mohib, and the U.S. pressured its allies to do the same.[9] The Doha talks between the U.S. and the Taliban lasted nearly a year before abruptly collapsing in September 2019 following a tweet from Trump.[12]

The Afghan government had said it was willing to directly negotiate with the Taliban without preconditions, but in late October 2019, Mohib announced the Afghan government's reversal of this policy, outlining a new demand that the Taliban agree to a cease-fire before engaging in negotiations.[12][13] Mohib described the precondition as a test of whether the Taliban could actually exert control over its commanders and militant forces.[12]