Taliban setup in Kabul sends envoy to Islamabad

PESHAWAR: The Taliban setup in Kabul has sent its envoy to Islamabad to run the Afghan embassy and also appointed three consul generals for Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, Taliban leaders said on Friday.

“Though Pakistan hasn’t officially recognised our government, we decided to send our diplomats to Islamabad to facilitate people seeking Afghanistan’s visas. The diplomats were issued visas in the Pakistani embassy in Kabul,” a senior Taliban leader told The News from Kabul.

Pleading anonymity, he said Mohammad Shokaib had been appointed as first secretary or charge d’affaires at the Afghan embassy in Islamabad. According to Taliban sources in the ministry of foreign affairs in Kabul, their foreign minister Maulvi Ameer Khan Muttaqi had approved the appointment of the three diplomats in Pakistan and signed their credentials.

Taliban said the decision to appoint diplomats was made on the growing demands from the people, mostly belonging to the development sector, seeking Afghanistan’s visas. According to the Taliban, Mohammad Shokaib will work as an acting ambassador till the appointment of a full-time envoy.

The Afghan embassy in Islamabad was without an ambassador since July this year when the previous government of Dr Ashraf Ghani called back their ambassador to Kabul as a mark of protest over the alleged kidnapping of Ms Silsila Alikhil, daughter of the then envoy Najibullah Alikhil by unknown people from the capital city.

The Taliban sources in Kabul said the Afghan embassy in Islamabad had resumed official function to help supervise visa issuance and other functions. In addition, three officials were appointed to run the consulates in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi.

Taliban said Hafiz Mohibullah was appointed as consul general at the Peshawar Consulate General, Mullah Mohammad Abbas in Karachi and Mullah Ghulam Rasool in Quetta. Asked if Pakistan was the first country to which the Taliban had sent their diplomats to resume diplomatic functions, the Taliban leaders said similar arrangements had been made in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

No country has given formal recognition to the new Taliban administration and Afghanistan’s embassies are largely still run by ambassadors appointed by the previous government, many of whom are outspoken critics of the Taliban.

Meanwhile, Suhail Shaheen, Taliban’s permanent representative-designate to the United Nations, urged the international community to disburse on an urgent basis the recently announced nearly one-billion-euro (some $1.2-billion) aid package pledged at a virtual G20 summit for Afghanistan , to all poor, vulnerable and displaced people.

“The IEA (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) government is ready to fully cooperate through the channelled agencies and other NGOs on the ground. The humanitarian assistance will not end our shared and mutual responsibility towards impending migration, famine and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. We call on the international community to support Afghanistan by unfreezing nearly $10 billion assets of the Afghan people and resuming the development aid and projects pledged to Afghanistan by the international community at the Geneva Conference 2020,” Shaheen said in his Twitter handle.