What was your problem with [Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin] Rabbani?
… … He was clearly a controversial figure. At this point, if our goal was to forge a broad-based Afghan alternative, Mr. Rabbani was somewhat of a problem, given that by appearing to be “the president,” quote, unquote, that it was not exactly a level playing field. It would be potentially an obstacle to forging the kind of Afghan unity that we wanted. If, at some time in the future, through an electoral process Mr. Rabbani emerges as the leader of the Afghanis, so be it. But from our point of view, it probably wasn’t going to work if he tried to take his position as head of the Northern Alliance or president of the Northern Alliance and translate that as something like the president of some sort of interim political arrangement for Afghanistan. … I know there was the view that we were somehow trying to keep the Northern Alliance at arm’s length. It is not true. On the other hand, we also understood that one could not equate Afghan opposition to Northern Alliance. All along, we we
