78 more airlifted from Af; US to stick to Aug. 31 exit
PM, Putin discuss Kabul crisis; Taliban won’t let more Afghans leave; tells women to stay at home
India on Tuesday officially revealed that it had codenamed its evacuation and repatriation operations from Afghanistan as “Operation Devi Shakti” (strength of the goddess), as Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in the afternoon to Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which Moscow said both leaders had decided “to enhance cooperation on countering the dissemination of the terrorist ideology and the drug threat emanating from the territory of Afghanistan”. Moscow said both leaders agreed that both India and Russia would “form a permanent bilateral channel for consultations on this issue”, adding both also
“noted the importance of coordinated efforts which would contribute to the establishment of peace and stability” in the strife-torn nation. Mr Modi tweeted that he “had a detailed and useful exchange of views with my friend President Putin on recent developments in Afghanistan” (and) also discussed issues on the bilateral agenda”.
On Tuesday morning, Air India flew back 78 passengers from the Tajik capital Dushanbe, including 25 Indians and several Afghan Sikhs who carried back the holy book of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib. These passengers were earlier airlifted from Kabul to Dushanbe by the Indian Air Force. The Guru Granth Sahib was received at Delhi airport by Union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri and MoS external affairs V. Muraleedharan.
Hours after a Taliban spokesman warned in Kabul on Tuesday that the United States should not extend its withdrawal
deadline beyond August 31, it was announced in Washington that President Joe Biden had decided not to extend his August 31 deadline for completing the USled evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies from Afghanistan. Mr Biden took the decision after consulting his national security team. Weighing the risks of keeping forces on the ground beyond the deadline, he opted to complete the mission by next Tuesday, which was the deadline set well before the Taliban completed its takeover of Afghanistan on August 15.
The Taliban, meanwhile, said in Kabul Tuesday that it would no longer allow Afghan nationals to go to the airport to take flights out of the country. Its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said while foreign citizens were allowed to leave, the crowds of Afghans crowding the airport should go home, saying the Taliban would “guarantee their security”. According to Reuters, he said that “we have forgotten everything in the past,” and claimed there was no list of people targeted for reprisals.
In the same press conference, he said that “women should stay home temporarily”. The Taliban fighters, he said, were “not trained on how to deal with women, how to speak to women”, and so women were told to stay at home for now. He said women employees will still receive their salaries and will be asked to come back “when we have a system in place”.
India, meanwhile, has told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday during a discussion on Afghanistan that it hopes the Afghan territory is not used by terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) to target any country, and it also hopes there is an inclusive and broad based dispensation in Afghanistan which represents all sections of Afghan society as this would help “the arrangement gain more acceptability and legitimacy”. Speaking about Indian development assistance to Afghanistan and close people to people ties, New Delhi said it stands “ready to assist our friends from Afghanistan in fulfilling their aspirations”. Significantly, there was no direct criticism by India of the Taliban but only a veiled concern on “the increasing violations of fundamental rights of Afghan citizens (who are) worried about whether their right to live with dignity would be respected”.