KABUL, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Afghanistan will start issuing passports to its citizens again on Tuesday, a senior official said, following months of delays that hampered attempts by those trying to flee the country after the Taliban seized control in August.
The process, which had slowed even before the Islamist militants’ return to power following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, will provide applicants with documents physically identical to those issued by the previous government, the official said.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has said the United States government will “sooner or later” have to recognise the Taliban, which now rules Afghanistan.
In a televised interview with the Turkish-state affiliated TRT World, Khan said on Saturday the US is in a state of “shock and confusion” after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15.
Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House armed services committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations has pulled out of delivering an address to world leaders at the General Assembly on Monday.
Ghulam Isaczai, who represented president Ashraf Ghani’s government that was overthrown last month, was due to defy the Taliban with a speech but his name was removed from the list of speakers.
The Taliban have banned hairdressers in Afghanistan’s Helmand province from shaving or trimming beards, saying it breaches their interpretation of Islamic law.
The rocky U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is imperiling Congress’ plans to repeal the war authorization that sent American troops to the Middle East in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The EU’s approach to foreign policy and economic policy needs to account for the fact that, globally, the space between the two areas is increasingly narrow
The NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan has laid bare several urgent challenges for the European Union.
Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, three heavyweights in the Gulf are carefully navigating the aftermath—each calculating what it stands to gain (or lose) in its relationship with the United States.
How does this development alter their perceptions of security, and how will it impact their dynamics vis-à-vis Washington? Based on recent travel to the region and several conversations with officials, here’s what to expect:
Some years ago, in Afghanistan, the anthropologist Scott Atran asked a Taliban fighter what it would take to stop the fighting, because families on both sides were crying. The fighter replied: “Leave our country and the crying will stop.”
Pakistan has repeated its call for the world not to “abandon” Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of that country, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
