This could be investments, reconstruction projects or “any kind of humanitarian support,” its spokesman, Mutiullah Rouhani of the German news agency dpa in Kunduz, said. Afghanistan remains uneventful even more than a month after the Islamists took full power. At least two people were killed and 19 others injured in an attack on a Taliban police vehicle in the capital, Kabul, on Saturday.
The Islamists captured the former German army base in Kunduz in the north of the Central Asian country on August 8th. A week later, they also seized power in Kabul. With the last US troops withdrawing half a month later, after nearly 20 years, the international military operation is over. The province of Kunduz, bearing the capital of the same name, was the focus of German military and civilian involvement.
Rouhani accused the international community of supporting a “corrupt government” for 20 years, but then stopped when the Taliban came to power. The spokesman stressed that the Taliban have brought peace to Afghanistan. “We are not terrorists.”
Meanwhile, more than 100 Afghan journalists have appealed to the international community to protect press freedom in their home country. Attacks on photographers and reporters have raised fears of the worst, according to an appeal published by Reporters Without Borders.
In Kabul, 24 women advocated for the right to work, education and freedom. “Women’s rights and human rights,” the women shouted, as recorded by local media on Sunday. Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001 was particularly marked by the oppression of women. Many fear that the Islamists will now re-impose similar rules. Until now, they have prevented girls from attending secondary schools and ordered universities to segregate the sexes.
“The Trump administration was a group of diplomatic amateurs,” former German diplomat Christoph Heusgen told Spiegel about former US President Donald Trump’s Afghan policy. It was a huge mistake to reach an agreement with the Taliban and to leave the Afghan government aside. Heusgen was previously a foreign policy advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).
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