Blinken: Taliban must earn world legitimacy
New regime misses mark, envoy says
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that any legitimacy or international support for the Taliban “will have to be earned” after Afghanistan’s new rulers announced an interim government that drew a deeply skeptical Western response.
The secretary of state and his German counterpart met at a U.S. base in Germany that has become a key transit point for evacuees from Afghanistan. They hosted a virtual meeting of officials from 22 countries as well as NATO, the European Union and the U.N. the day after the Taliban announced their allmale interim government.
Blinken said the new Afghan government “certainly does not meet the test of inclusivity, and it includes people who have very chal
lenging track records.”
The administration is stacked with veterans of the Taliban’s hard-line rule from the 1990s and the 20-year battle against the U.S.-led coalition. Initial responses suggested that it may struggle to win the international support that the new leaders desperately need to avoid an economic meltdown. It includes Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted for questioning by the FBI, as interior minister.
Taliban officials also reinstated the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, run by little-known cleric Mohamad Khalid. During Taliban rule 20 years ago, morality police roamed the streets, implementing the group’s austere interpretation of Islamic law — with harsh restrictions on women, strictly enforced prayer times, and even bans on kite-flying and chess.
In an English-language list of new appointees distributed by the Taliban, the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice was the only name not translated.
A body under the previous government, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, was not included at all, apparently having been disbanded. Protesters across major cities this week called on the militants to give women seats in government and to run the country with less repression than the last time around.
In Kabul, some people expressed fears that the return of the ministry meant that the Taliban would not seek to change.
“People have stopped listening to loud music in public … fearing the past experiences from when the Taliban last ruled,” said Gul, a Kabul resident who gave only his first name because of safety concerns. “I personally didn’t see any forced prayers. But there is fear in everyone’s minds.”
A Taliban spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the ministry or its mandate. On Wednesday, the Taliban’s Interior Ministry announced that protests were discouraged “for the time being.”
The announcement of a new government was made hours after Taliban fired their guns into the air to disperse protesters in the capital, Kabul, and arrested several journalists, the second time in less than a week that heavy-handed tactics were used to break up a demonstration.
“The Taliban seek international legitimacy and support,” Blinken told reporters. “Any legitimacy, any support will have to be earned, and we heard that across the board, from everyone participating in today’s session.”
U.S. engagement with the Taliban and a new govern- ment “will be for purposes of advancing the national interest” and those of partners, and “in ways that are fully consistent with our laws,” he added.
Blinken and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas pressed demands for the Taliban to allow Afghans to travel freely and to respect their basic rights, including women’s. They also pushed the Taliban to ensure that Afghanistan is not used to launch attacks, refrain from reprisal attacks and allow humanitarian access.
Blinken said the U.S. is still “assessing the announcement” and noted that the Taliban has billed it as a caretaker Cabinet. “We will judge it, and them, by its actions,” he said.
Maas said the make-up so far of the new government “is not the signal for more international cooperation.”
“It must be clear to the Taliban that international isolation cannot be in their interest,” Maas said. He added however that no one has an interest in turning their back on Afghanistan, and the international community must use what possibilities it can to exert influence on the group.
As for formal diplomatic recognition, Maas said: “I don’t see it at the moment.”
France’s government said the Taliban’s “actions do not match their words.”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in an online briefing that France and others had demanded the safe departure of Afghans who wish to leave, free access to humanitarian aid, the “total severing” of relations with terrorist groups and respect for human rights, especially women’s rights.
“We can only note that these demands have not been met,” she said.
Pakistan’s foreign minister urged the international community to help prevent a humanitarian and economic crisis in Afghanistan.
Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a virtual meeting of countries neighboring Afghanistan that since Kabul’s takeover by the Taliban, “much dreaded bloodshed has not occurred,” and the prospect of a protracted conflict and civil war seems to have been averted. He said that so far, a feared exodus of refugees has also not taken place.
The situation remains complex and fluid in Afghanistan, however, and it “requires discarding old lenses, developing new insights, and proceeding with a realistic and pragmatic approach,” he said. Qureshi later spoke to the meeting hosted by Blinken and Maas.
Blinken met with Maas at the Ramstein Air Base, where he traveled after visiting Qatar, another important staging post in the evacuation effort.
So far, more than 34,000 people have been flown to Ramstein under a transit agreement with Germany, As of Wednesday, about 23,000 people had been flown from Ramstein to the U.S. or other places. There were about 11,200 people at the base and the nearby Rhine Ordnance Barracks awaiting onward travel.
Authorities say that about 90 people have requested asylum in Germany during their layovers at Ramstein, and officials in both countries say that is in keeping with existing rules and practice. Maas stressed that that is less than 1% of those who have been taken to the base, and that the German-U.S. transit agreement is being respected fully.
Maas said there are various reasons why those people have sought asylum, for instance that they have relain Germany, and noted that the transit operation isn’t expected to last for more than a few weeks. So he expects that “this situation will remain absolutely manageable.”
MORALITY POLICE
While the Taliban were in power from 1996 until 2001, the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforced a severe interpretation of Islamic law.
It was disbanded by then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and replaced with the Ministry for Hajj and Religious Affairs. Karzai’s Cabinet approved a less powerful Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice in 2006 amid pressure from conservatives.
Religious policing predated Taliban rule. The government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who served as president between 1992 and 1996, created the vice and virtue ministry. But under the Taliban its role expanded. Human Rights Watch later called the institution a “notorious symbol of arbitrary abuses.”
For ordinary people, the ministry was the face of the regime, said Robert Crews, a historian of Afghanistan at Stanford University. “It is the institution that most Afghans were likely to encounter, and it is one that the leadership prioritized above all others.”
Accounts from the time detail forces patrolling the streets, shutting down shops and markets at prayer time. They beat people caught listening to music and frowned upon dancing, kite-flying and American-style haircuts.
Squads of the ministry’s morality police punished those who disobeyed modesty codes, with beards too thin or ankles that showed. They banished girls from school and women from the workplace and the public eye. A woman could not venture outside without a male guardian.
With these memories in mind, many Afghans remain skeptical of promises from the Islamist fighters that they have changed.
Two Taliban members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the minister appointed to run the restored government body, Khalid, was a cleric well-versed in religious law.
“The ministry will have their own specific officials, but not police or soldiers,” one of the two told The Washington Post from Kabul.
“The ministry has not started working yet. Its duty will be to preach virtues and teachings of Islam, and prevent people from vice [and] unlawful acts,” he said. “It is an important ministry.”
The second member said he did not expect the Taliban to use force to apply its guidelines in the same way it had before.
While several residents of the Afghan capital said they had not encountered the militants enforcing strict regulations, they said people had changed their behavior in anticipation.
A woman who works for a private company said she had just gone back to work after spending nearly two weeks hiding at home.
“For the last three days, no one stopped me,” she said. “I am still moving in the streets, filled with nervousness that they might ask me at any time.”
The Taliban has put out mixed messages on whether women can return to work. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has said there would be “no discrimination against women,” but added, “of course, within the frameworks we have.”
Crews said that if the ministry tried to return to the past, it would probably face conflict in an Afghanistan that had changed much over two decades.
“There’s no reason to expect anything different this time from the Taliban, except that they seem to be surprised by how different Afghan society has become,” Crews said, adding that he “sees the puzzlement on the faces of Taliban fighters when in recent days they’ve encountered female protesters who do not back down, even at gunpoint.”
Information for this article was contributed by Christoph Noelting, Geir Moulson, Angela Charlton and Munir Ahmed of The Associated Press; and by Haq Nawaz Khan, Ellen Francis and Adam Taylor of The Washington Post.
“People have stopped listening to loud music in public … fearing the past experiences from when the Taliban last ruled. I personally didn’t see any forced prayers. But there is fear in everyone’s minds.”
— Gul, a Kabul resident who gave only his first name