Afghan policy experts are quietly urging the Biden transition team to consider asking President Donald Trump’s Afghan peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, to remain on the job as a transitional negotiator after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
The effort reflects a belief that the ultimate end game sought by Trump and Biden—the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan—is largely the same and that a move to immediately replace Khalilzad at a sensitive stage in U.S. peace negotiations with the Taliban could complicate that effort.
