US asks Taliban to spare embassy once Kabul falls

Ag AFP

WASHINGTON/HERAT/KABUL: American negotiators are trying to extract assurances from the Taliban that they will not attack the US Embassy in Kabul if they overrun the capital in a direct challenge to the country’s government, two American officials said.

According to a report in New York Times on Thursday, the effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy as the fighters rapidly seize cities across Afghanistan. The Taliban’s advance has put embassies in Kabul on high alert for a surge of violence in coming months, or even weeks, and forced consulates and other diplomatic missions elsewhere in the country to shut down.

Khalilzad is hoping to convince Taliban leaders that the embassy must remain open, and secure, if the group hopes to receive American financial aid and other assistance as part of a future Afghan government. The Taliban leadership has said it wants to be seen as a legitimate steward of the country, and is seeking relations with other global powers, including Russia and China, in part to receive economic support.

Two officials confirmed Khalilzad’s efforts, which have not been previously reported, on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate negotiations. The State Department’s spokesman, Ned Price, declined to comment, but said funding would be conditioned on whether future Afghan governments would “have any semblance of durability.”

“Legitimacy bestows, and essentially is the ticket, to the levels of international assistance, humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people,” Price said.

American diplomats in Kabul now are trying to determine how soon they may need to evacuate the US Embassy should the Taliban prove to be more bent on destruction than a détente. On Thursday, the embassy urged Americans who were not working for the US government to leave Afghanistan immediately on commercial flights.

Biden administration officials insist that there are no immediate plans to significantly draw down the embassy’s staff of 4,000 employees, including about 1,400 Americans, as US troops formally complete their withdrawal from the country.

“We are withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan, but we are not withdrawing from Afghanistan,” the State Department said in a statement. “Although US troops will depart, the United States will maintain our robust diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan.”

On Thursday, the Taliban took over the police headquarters in Herat, Afghanistan´s third-largest city and also seized another key capital Ghazni just 150 kilometres from capital Kabul.

An AFP correspondent filmed the Taliban flag flying over the police HQ in Herat, while the militants tweeted "the enemy fled. Dozens of military vehicles, weapons and ammunition fell into the hands of the Mujahideen".

Further details of the Taliban´s presence in the city were not immediately available, but it has been under siege for weeks. Herat -- about 150 kilometres from the Iranian border -- is home to veteran warlord Ismail Khan, who for weeks has been rallying his forces to make a stand against the Taliban.

Earlier, the interior ministry confirmed the fall of Ghazni, which lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway and serves as a gateway between the capital and Taliban strongholds in the south. "The enemy took control," spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai said in a message to media.

Pro-Taliban Twitter feeds showed video of him being escorted out of Ghazni by Taliban fighters and sent on his way in a convoy, prompting speculation in the capital that the government was angered with how easily the provincial administration capitulated.

As security forces retreated across the country, Kabul handed a proposal to Taliban negotiators in Qatar offering a power-sharing deal in return for an end to fighting, according to a member of the government´s team in Doha who asked not to be named. A second negotiator, Ghulam Farooq Majroh, said the Taliban had been given an offer about a "government of peace" without providing more specifics.

Authorities in Kabul have now effectively lost most of northern and western Afghanistan and are left holding a scattered archipelago of contested cities also dangerously at risk.

The loss of Ghazni piles more pressure on the country´s already overstretched airforce, needed to bolster Afghanistan´s dispersed security forces who have increasingly been cut off from reinforcements by road.

Pro-Taliban social media accounts also boasted of the vast spoils of war their fighters had recovered in recent days, posting photos of armoured vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized by the insurgents at abandoned Afghan military bases.

In less than a week the insurgents have taken 10 provincial capitals and encircled the biggest city in the north, the traditional anti-Taliban bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Fighting was also raging in Kandahar and Lashkar Gar -- pro-Taliban heartlands in the south. An official in Lashkar Gah said Taliban fighters were inching closer to government positions after a massive car bomb badly damaged the city´s police headquarters Wednesday evening.

The blast forced local police to retreat to the governor´s office, while around 40 of their colleagues and one senior commander surrendered to the Taliban.

And in Kandahar, the Taliban said they had overrun the heavily fortified jail, saying "hundreds of prisoners were released and taken to safety". The loss of the prison is a further ominous sign for the country´s second city, which has been besieged for weeks by the Taliban.

There were also reports that hundreds of troops at Herat´s Shindand Air Base -- one of the country´s largest military facilities -- had deployed to the city to boost its defences.

Meanwhile, Germany said Thursday that it would stop sending financial support to Afghanistan in the event that the Taliban succeeded in seizing power in the country.

Speaking to the German broadcaster ZDF, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the Taliban know that Afghanistan cannot survive without international aid. "We will not send another cent to this country if the Taliban take complete control, introduce Sharia law and turn it into a caliphate," Maas said. Germany sends Afghanistan 430 million euros in aid a year.