New Afghan government to be announced soon, says Stanikzai

ISLAMABAD: The Taliban have said that the new government in Afghanistan will be announced in a day or two as all formalities have been completed following two weeks of consultations with all stakeholders.


The group had earlier said it would announce a government after all foreign forces had completely withdrawn from Afghanistan. The last of the remaining American troops had departed late on Monday night after handing over control of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to the Taliban.

Confirming that the new government will have representation from all Afghan ethnic groups, the deputy head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar,

Sher Abbas Stanikzai

, said those who had served in cabinets after the US occupation in 2001 would not be included in the upcoming setup. He was speaking after the three-day talks between Taliban leaders in the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar ended. The talks were chaired by Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada and attended by his key deputies, Mullah Yaqoob, son of slain Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani network.

According to Taliban sources, the next government will include, besides

Pashtuns

, new faces, mostly young and educated people from the

Tajik

, Hazara,

Uzbek

and other ethnic groups.

Without disclosing the form of government, Stanikzai said that women would have an important role in it. He did not specify whether women would be appointed to high positions such as ministers.

The Taliban leader called on the international community to recognise the new Afghan government as it would be formed peacefully for the first time in 40 years. "All Afghans are united and we expect the US, EU and all countries of the world to recognise our government," Stanikzai said, adding that their members in Doha were in regular contact with envoys of foreign countries.

According to Stanikzai, Kabul airport would become functional within two days, with financial support of $30 million from Doha and Ankara. He said Afghans with proper travel documents would be allowed to leave the country after the resumption of commercial flights. The Taliban leader claimed that the US would deport around 2,500 people who had fled without documents during the evacuations.

The real test for the upcoming Afghan government, observers believe, would be how they handle the enormous challenges faced by the country. Over half a million Afghans have been internally displaced due to months of fighting between Taliban fighters and government forces.

Government employees have not been paid salaries for months and banks are barely functional as Afghanistan has been cut off from international financial institutions after the Taliban seized control of the country. The US has frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to

Da Afghanistan Bank

(the country’s central bank). Afghanistan is heavily dependent on financial support from outside as international aid had covered around 75% of the previous US-backed government’s budget. A day earlier, an Afghanistan central bank board member had urged US President Joe Biden and the IMF to release funds for the cash-starved country.

With no evacuation flights, thousands of Afghans scared of Taliban rule have moved to the country’s border towns to cross into Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian republics. "Thousands of people have gathered at Spin Boldak and Torkhan (Afghanistan’s border crossings with Pakistan) and the situation is far worse than what was seen at Kabul airport. As there are no foreign forces here, it has not been covered by the media," Afghan journalist

Natiq Malikzada

said.