BLINKEN Threatens TALIBAN! Taliban must allow departures from Afghanistan, Blinken says
The new Taliban-led Afghan government must live up to its commitments to allow safe passage for those looking to leave Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.
Speaking from Germany on Wednesday during a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of United States-allied nations, Blinken outlined three “core objectives” of US policy towards Afghanistan following the completed withdrawal of American troops from the country.
“The Taliban has said repeatedly that any Afghans who want to travel and have the appropriate documents will be able to do so.”
He specifically urged the Taliban to allow the departure of charter flights seeking to evacuate American citizens and vulnerable Afghans from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. According to reports, hundreds of people have been waiting for clearance to leave the airport there for several days.
Scott Cooper, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a US military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said getting people who want to leave out of Afghanistan is likely to be the most challenging of the administration’s three objectives.
“The thing that strikes me is how limited these objectives are,” Cooper told Al Jazeera. “If you were to look at any of the statements of Secretary Blinken’s predecessors or to those that were engaged in Afghanistan, this is far different than anything that we were talking about from late 2001 onward.”
0 Comments