Taliban leaders reported to be in Afghan capital Kabul for talks

Senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Muttaqi is said to be in Afghanistan’s capital negotiating with Kabul’s political leadership.

Those involved in the talks include Abdullah Abdullah, who once headed the country’s negotiating council, and former president Hamid Karzai.

Mr Muttaqi was a higher education minister when the Taliban last ruled and he began making contacts with Afghan political leaders even before President Ashraf Ghani secretly slipped away from the Presidential Palace last weekend. His departure left a devastating vacuum that Taliban who were surrounding the city strode in to fill.

French nationals and their Afghan colleagues line up to board a French military transport plane at Kabul airport. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images

It is understood the talks are aimed at bringing other non-Taliban leaders into the government that Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen has said will be an “inclusive Afghan government.”

The UN Security Council called for talks to create a new government in Afghanistan after Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned of “chilling” curbs on human rights and violations against women and girls.

Many Afghans fear the Taliban will return to past harsh practices. During their 1996-2001 rule, women could not work and punishments such as public stoning, whipping and hanging were administered.

Mr Shaheen told Dunya News the Taliban would improve the security of Kabul and “respect the rights of women and minorities as per Afghan norms and Islamic values”.

He added the new regime would ensure representation of all ethnicities and that the Taliban were keen to work with the international community to rebuild the country.

There is little indication about the substance of the talks, but Mr Shaheen earlier said that a government will be announced after negotiations with non-Taliban leaders are completed.

People climb atop a plane as they wait at the airport in Kabul to flee Afghanistan. Photograph: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, military flights evacuating diplomats and civilians from Afghanistan restarted early on Tuesday after the runway at Kabul airport was cleared of thousands of people desperate to flee after the Taliban seized the capital.

The number of civilians at the airport had thinned out, a Western security official at the facility said, a day after chaotic scenes in which USpolice fired gunshots to disperse crowds and people clung to a US military transport plane as it taxied for take-off.

“Many people who were here yesterday have gone home,” the official said. Witnesses, however, could still hear occasional shots coming from the direction of the airport, while streets elsewhere in Kabul appeared calm.

US forces took charge of the airport, the only remaining exit point from Afghanistan as the Taliban held control of all ground routes following their dramatic advances across the country during the past week, which climaxed on Sunday when the insurgents streamed triumphantly into Kabul, capturing the capital without a fight.

Flights were suspended flights for much of Monday, when at least five people were reportedly killed, although it was unclear whether they had been shot or crushed in a stampede. A US official said two gunmen who had appeared to have fired into the crowd were killed by US troops.

Media reported two people fell to their deaths from the underside of a US military aircraft after it took off.

A first German military plane to land in Kabul since the Taliban takeover evacuated only seven people, the government said on Tuesday, due to chaos at the airport.

Germany, which had the second largest military contingent in Afghanistan after the United States, wants to airlift thousands of German-Afghan dual nationals as well as rights activists, lawyers and people who worked with foreign forces.

Defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the A400M transport plane undertook a “breakneck landing” on Monday evening, with its main aim to bring in German soldiers to secure the evacuation. “We have a very chaotic, dangerous and complex situation at the airport,” she told broadcaster ARD. “We had very little time, so we only took on board people who were on site.”

US president Joe Biden defends his actions on Afghanistan during a speech in the East Room of the White House in Washington DC. Photograph: EPA

Only seven made as the plane had to leave quickly and other Germans could not get into the airport without protection from German soldiers, a foreign ministry spokesperson said. “Admission of people from the civilian part of the airport was not made possible by the partners exercising security responsibility at the airport,” they said.

Against the scenes of panic and confusion in Kabul, US president Joe Biden defended his country’s decision to withdraw US forces after 20 years of war.

Mr Biden insisted he had to decide between asking US forces to fight endlessly in what he called Afghanistan’s civil war or follow through on an agreement to withdraw negotiated by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Mr Biden said. “After 20 years I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces. That’s why we’re still there.”

Facing a barrage of criticism, from even his own diplomats, he blamed the Taliban’s takeover on Afghan political leaders who fled and its army’s unwillingness to fight.

The Taliban captured Afghanistan’s biggest cities in days rather than the months predicted by US intelligence, in many cases after demoralised government forces surrendered despite years of training and equipping by the United States and others.

European Union foreign ministers will meet in emergency session on Tuesday via teleconference to discuss the unfolding crisis.

Irish and EU efforts in the coming days are expected to focus on the extraction of their citizens from Afghanistan, officials said, though EU ministers are likely to signal that any aid to the next government in Kabul will be conditional on human rights being respected by the new regime.

Irish officials stressed the importance of protecting the rights of women and girls, a core element of Irish foreign policy.

â€" AP/Reuters

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