‘Time for this war in Afghanistan to end’
General who survived 9/11 urges immediate peace negotiations
KABUL, Afghanistan — When American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Lt. Col. John Nicholson survived by chance. That morning, as dozens of his colleagues were killed, he was moving house and was not at his desk — which he said was 100 feet from the nose of the plane.
Nearly 17 years to the day, now a four-star general departing as the commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, he stood under the shade of pine trees in Kabul on Sunday and delivered an emotional farewell.
The general, who spent 31 months at the helm of a quagmire of a mission that has shaped his career over four tours of the country and has cast a shadow on a generation of U.S. military leaders, said he wanted to speak from the heart.
“It is time for this war in Afghanistan to end,” Nicholson said.
The general called on the Taliban to “stop killing your fellow Afghans,” but he also referred indirectly to regional players — particularly Pakistan, where the militants enjoy sanctuary — who have complicated the fight.
“Whose voices are important?” he asked. “The outsiders who are encouraging you to fight, or the voices of your own people who are encouraging you to peace?”
Naming the first and the last American soldier killed under his command and praying for the hundreds in between, the general demonstrated little of the chest-thumping of previous commanders and put aside his own sometimes rosy assessments of the situation for a more somber reality that seems to be dawning on U.S. military leadership.
He sought to provide a reminder about why the United States was in Afghanistan in the first place, a narrative that is increasingly lost on much of the public.
The war has dragged on so long that it is now fought by a generation of soldiers too young to remember the day when planes flown by members of al-Qaida, which had found protection in Afghanistan under the Taliban, struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Then, Nicholson, 61, echoed a call to immediately begin peace negotiations — an approach that has become a U.S. priority that the Trump administration hopes will allow it to diminish its presence in the country — while also warning the Taliban that the United States would continue to fight.
His departure comes as the war seems to spiral deadlier even as it recedes from American attention — Nicholson did not meet once with President Donald Trump in the 20 months since he moved into the White House.
Like his predecessor, John F. Campbell, Nicholson is likely to retire immediately, a diplomat with ties to the general said, a sign that the posting is no longer a springboard to more senior roles, and what appears to be the final chapter of his career encapsulates the trajectory of a 17-year war.