Members of the Taliban terrorist organization concluded their participation on Monday in a U.N.-led international meeting on the future of Afghanistan, thanking organizers for including them and specifically expressing praise for the government of U.S. President Joe Biden or the engagement.
Doha, Qatar, hosted a two-day summit for a variety of representatives of international governments on Sunday and Monday, informally known as the “Doha talks,” led by U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo. Despite her leadership, the Taliban excluded Afghan women from participating, outraging international human rights groups and complicating discussions with Western countries present.
The head of the Taliban delgation, top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, acknowledged the global disgust with the Taliban’s flagrant abuse of women in his remarks to the summit, but described it as a diplomatic obligation for other countries to ignore the Taliban’s flagrant human rights abuses.
This week’s meeting was the third iteration of the “Doha talks” but the first in which the Taliban participated, as the jihadist terrorists attempted to impose unreasonable demands on the United Nations for their participation in the past two engagements.
The Taliban, which now calls itself the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” has been the uncontested government of Afghanistan since August 15, 2021, when the terrorists stormed Kabul and the U.S.-backed government there fled without a fight. President Biden’s decision to violate an agreement brokered with the Taliban and former Afghan government by his predecessor, Donald Trump, in early 2021 prompted the terrorists to launch a territorial conquest campaign that resulted in the fall of Kabul.
Mujahid’s publicly released remarks to the meeting on Sunday emphasized the Taliban’s alleged support for “positive engagement” with the world and demanded that relevant parties lift sanctions on his terrorist organization to allow Afghanistan to enrich itself.
“We perceive the current Doha meeting as a crucial opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue regarding the unilateral and multilateral sanctions imposed on some officials and our financial and banking sectors,” Mujahid said, according to the Afghan outlet Tolo News, “as well as the broader challenges confronting our national economy.”
“This forum represents a positive step towards addressing these issues and providing reassurance to the Afghan people that the imposed restrictions on our nation will be alleviated in due course,” he added.
Referring obliquely to the many human rights atrocities attributed to his organization, Mujahid said, “I do not deny that some countries may have problems with some measures of the Islamic Emirate.”
“I think that policy differences amid states are natural, and it is the duty of experienced diplomats to find ways of interaction and understanding rather than confrontation,” he asserted.
Mujahid also took the opportunity to celebrate the documented eradication of the opium trade and poppy cultivation under the Taliban, which the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned last week could potentially devastate Afghanistan’s addict community.
“In addition, despite unilateral and multilateral sanctions and pressures, we banned the cultivation, processing and smuggling of poppy which affected the world,” the spokesman said. “Poppy cultivation, which remained as a significant challenge in Afghanistan, we reduced it to almost zero.”
Mujahid suggested the world should reward the Taliban for cutting the world’s opium supply by lifting sanctions.
Tolo News spoke to Mujahid on Monday and found him, following private engagements with world diplomats, optimistic about the future of the Taliban’s acceptance in the international community.
“The meeting is proceeding well, and some countries are in favor of cooperation in the economic and financial sectors with Afghanistan,” Mujahid was quoted as saying.
Tolo noted that the Taliban enjoy took the opportunity to thank several countries by name for their approach to Afghanistan.
“Mujahid praised the positions of Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, the United States, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation at this meeting,” Tolo News reported.
China is the only country in the world that has formally accepted a Taliban terrorist as an ambassador to its capital. Russia claims to be working on removing the Taliban from its list of designated terrorist organizations. The Taliban’s relationships with Pakistan and Iran have been fraught, as territorial disputes over local water supplies and other issues have caused frustrations on both sides.
Tolo News did not indicate what Mujahid was thanking the United States for doing. Mujahid added his own praise for America separately in a post on Twitter following the report that also did not offer any detail regarding the decision to make such an overture.
“The stances of Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, the United States, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation were commendable,” Mujahid wrote.
The United States waged war against the Taliban for 20 years in response to the Taliban’s relationship with al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the massacres on the American homeland on September 11, 2001. Part of the Trump agreement that Biden broke required the Taliban to cut ties to all terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda.
Today, al-Qaeda is thriving in Afghanistan to the point of encouraging international jihadists to travel there.
“Go to Afghanistan, learn from its conditions, and benefit from their [the Taliban’s] experience,” a writing widely believed to have been penned by the head of al-Qaeda, Sayf al-Adl, encouraged in June.
In addition to greatly boosting al-Qaeda’s position in Afghanistan, the Biden administration’s Afghanistan policy has greatly enriched the Taliban. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. government watchdog office, the Biden administration has paid the Taliban nearly $11 million in “taxes,” customs duties, and other fees since August 2021.