Source: The New Arab
The United States did not put enough pressure on former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to share power with the Taliban, Zalmay Khalilzad, who recently resigned as US envoy to Afghanistan, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS.
Source: The Guardian
Russia has hosted the most high-profile international talks on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, calling for an injection of aid to help the crippled economy but also demanding a more inclusive government.
Senior Russian diplomats made clear that formal recognition of the Taliban regime was not on the table until it does more to improve human rights and broadens an all-male cabinet, most of them clerics from the Pashtun ethnic group.
Source: RFE/RL
WASHINGTON — Zalmay Khalilzad, the top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, is stepping down from his long-standing role following the Western military pullout from that war-ravaged country, the State Department said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 18 said Khalilzad, who led U.S. negotiators in talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, prior to the Islamist group’s takeover of Afghanistan, was leaving his position and that his deputy, Thomas West, would take over.
Source: BBC
The US government has offered financial compensation to the relatives of 10 people mistakenly killed by the American military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August.
An aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the strike.
Source: Al Jazeera
The withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan is inevitably leaving a political vacuum in South and Central Asia. The question that many are asking is who will step in to fill it. Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours – Pakistan, Iran and China – all have special interests in the country that they are likely to pursue with renewed vigour.
Source: RFE/RL
Anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmad Masud briefly visited Dushanbe for Afghan peace talks — sponsored by Tajikistan and Pakistan — but Taliban representatives failed to attend, sources close to the Tajik government told RFE/RL.
Three sources told RFE/RL that Masud’s trip to Dushanbe took place shortly after Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said on September 17 that his country would host negotiations between the new Afghan rulers and Masud’s predominantly ethnic Tajik resistance force based in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Province.
Source: The Guardian
G20 leaders and ministers have agreed they will have no option but to involve the Taliban in sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but say that this stops short of political recognition of the Taliban as a government.
The consensus view came at a video conference on the Afghan crisis at which the EU stepped up its aid to a total of €1bn (£850m), and it was agreed in principle that the IMF and World Bank could provide aid. Nearly $9bn of Afghan assets in overseas banks have been frozen by the US.
Source: The Guardian
The United States has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, but refused to give political recognition to the country’s new rulers, the Taliban said on Sunday.
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) – The United States said on Sunday the first face-to-face meeting between senior U.S. and Taliban officials since the hardline group retook power in Afghanistan was “candid and professional” and that the U.S. side reiterated that the Taliban would be judged on their actions, not just their words.
Source: Reuters
KABUL, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Afghans flocked to the passport office in Kabul on Wednesday, just a day after news that it would re-open this week to issue the documents, while Taliban security men had to beat back some in the crowd in efforts to maintain order.
Taliban officials have said the service will resume from Saturday, after being suspended since their takeover and the fall of the previous government in August, which stranded many of those desperate to flee the country.