Zalmay Khalilzad Chair on Afghanistan and former US Ambassador to Afghanistan James B. Cunningham cowrites for CNN with former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker on the need for the United States to continue to be an engaged partner with Afghanistan:
We arrived in Kabul in the summer of 2011 to assume the leadership of the American Embassy. The U.S. military surge had been completed and was beginning to reverse from its peak of some 100,000 troops. The U.S. civilian surge had peaked, with more than 1,200 American diplomats, civil servants and contractors throughout the country, working under difficult and dangerous conditions, to help the Afghan people rebuild their country.