Security fear: Australia to close embassy in Afghanistan

KABUL: Australia on Tuesday abruptly announced it will shutter its embassy in Afghanistan this week, expressing fears over the "increasingly uncertain security environment" in Kabul as foreign troops withdraw.

The Taliban, which has ramped up violence across the country in recent weeks, reacted by saying it would provide a "safe environment" to foreign diplomats and humanitarian organisations.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the embassy would close in just three days. Around 80 Australian troops are leaving as part of the wider military pull-out, and without that small contingent and the larger US force as back-up, Morrison said there was an "increasingly uncertain security environment".

"The government has been advised that security arrangements could not be provided to support our ongoing diplomatic presence," he said in a statement. Western diplomats and military officials have been scrambling to work out how to provide security for their future civilian presence in Afghanistan with fears growing of a Taliban comeback.

The hardline group, which briefly ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, said on Tuesday foreign diplomats can "continue their operations as usual". "We will not pose any threats to them," spokesman Mohammad Naeem said.

"The only incentive for foreign embassies to remain is the humanitarian work that they are involved in, but if their personnel are endangered then there is no point in remaining here," a foreign defence official based in Kabul said.

Nishank Motwani, an Afghanistan specialist based in Australia, said the Taliban would interpret Morrison´s announcement as a victory. "The Taliban will see it as a clear sign that other Nato and non-Nato partner countries are likely to shutter their diplomatic missions because of the US´ decision to exit Afghanistan and the security vacuum its departure will inevitably create," he said.

Afghanistan´s foreign ministry said it hoped Australia would review its decision, while an Afghan employee at the embassy described fear at the mission´s withdrawal. "I put my life in danger protecting the embassy and now they are leaving us. The Taliban have our names. We are scared," the employee said.

The sudden closure of the Australian embassy surprised some experts. "It is not set in stone that this is going to be a Taliban roll-up in the next few weeks," said John Blaxland, Professor of International Security at the Australian National University.

"This is not Saigon 1975," he added, a reference to the dramatic helicopter evacuation from the roof of the US embassy in South Vietnam as the Viet Cong and regular communist military forces seized the city.

Meanwhile, eleven militants were killed in an airstrike by the Afghan Air Force targeting a group of Taliban militants on Monday night, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

The airstrike launched in Badpakh district of Afghanistan's eastern Laghman province also destroyed a large number of weapons and ammunition of the militants, the ministry said in a statement.