Days after U.S. and EU representatives met with former Afghan leaders at an anti-Taliban convention in Dushanbe, two senior Western diplomats will journey to Delhi this week to satisfy and transient Indian officers on the most recent steps in Afghanistan. On Monday, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, is predicted to satisfy with senior officers within the Ministry of External Affairs, together with the purpose particular person for Afghanistan and Pakistan, J.P. Singh, and Deputy National Security Advisor, Vikram Misri, throughout a stopover in Delhi. Mr. West, who met with counterparts in Tokyo on Friday, will head to Abu Dhabi after his conferences in India, the place he’ll meet officers, and Afghans in exile. On Thursday, the U.Ok. Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nigel Casey, will meet with the officers as nicely.
“Special Representative West will consult with partners and Afghans regarding the humanitarian and economic crises in Afghanistan, protection of Afghans’ rights, and shared security concerns,” the U.S. State Department mentioned asserting the go to final week, and added that Mr. West will interact with the “Afghan diaspora, including human rights, business, political, and media leaders on how to address these challenges”.
Numerous former Afghan officers, together with former President Ashraf Ghani, reside in Abu Dhabi at current, after he fled final August. Last week, greater than 100 former officers and Afghan leaders, lots of whom had fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, met for the primary time on the ‘Herat Security Dialogue’ in Tajikistan, together with the European Union’s Special Representative, Tomas Niklasson, and the U.S. Charge d’Affaires for the Embassy to Afghanistan that has relocated to Doha, Karen Decker.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented transfer, the Taliban regime lastly allowed former President Hamid Karzai, one of many few Afghan leaders who determined to remain on in Kabul after the Ghani authorities fell, to depart the nation for the primary time. Mr. Karzai, who had earlier deliberate to go to India in June, and was additionally invited to different international locations, had been stopped from leaving by the Taliban regime. On Saturday, his former Finance Minister, Omar Zakhiwal, introduced that that they had each left Kabul, posting an image on social media, and added that they’d each return to Afghanistan “soon”.
Mr. Karzai is predicted to go to Germany by way of the U.A.E., and in addition go to different European international locations on his first journey out, the place he’ll bear well being check-ups, meet his son who’s in school in Germany, and meet with each Western officers and Afghan diaspora members there.
“After months of being under de facto house arrest, it is significant that [former] President Karzai will be travelling to Europe,” Afghanistan’s former Foreign Minister Rangin Dafdar Spanta informed The Hindu. “The visit of an integrative figure like the former President…will give hope for the people of Afghanistan at this time,” he added.
The visits of envoys to Delhi and Mr. Karzai’s go to overseas comes at a time the U.S. and EU are believed to be stepping up efforts to push the Taliban’s “interim government” in direction of talks for a extra inclusive authorities in Kabul. However, the Taliban has up to now not proven any inclination to maintain guarantees made within the Doha Agreement, and to Western officers, that it’s going to settle for sharing energy with different leaders, permit secondary schooling for women, or carry new decrees limiting ladies’s employment and motion within the nation. Of specific concern has been a extreme “downslide” within the human rights scenario in Afghanistan, together with the general public flogging of 14 women and men by the Taliban in Logar province, harking back to Taliban atrocities throughout its earlier rule from 1996-2001.
Source: www.thehindu.com