Taliban May Announce New Government on Friday as Afghanistan Economy Facing Collapse

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Sept 2: Amidst an apparent economic collapse, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are preparing to unveil their new government as many countries around the world are learnt to be recasting their foreign policies to find ways out to deal with a government that will be made of the people branded as militants.

As the economy teetered on the edge of collapse more than two weeks after the Islamist militia captured Kabul and brought a chaotic end to 20 years of war, Taliban official Ahmadullah Muttaqi said on social media a ceremony was being prepared at the presidential palace in Kabul, while private broadcaster Tolo said an announcement on a new government was imminent.

The Taliban sources said the announcement of a cabinet was expected to take place on Friday following afternoon prayers and was likely to be headed by its “supreme spiritual commander” Haibatullah Akhundzada,

While it is still being debated in various national capitals if many countries across the world would recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan and change the foreign policy accordingly, Pakistan on Thursday temporarily closed a key border crossing with Afghanistan, apparently due to fear of the influx of refugees eager to leave their homeland after the Taliban seized power last month.

Chaman border crossing – the second-largest commercial border point with Afghanistan after the Torkham commercial town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – has been closed due to security threats, official sources said.

The crossing links Pakistan’s border town of Chaman with Spin Boldak in the Afghan province of Kandahar and is frequented by the Afghan as well as used for trade between the two countries.

Thousands of Afghans have been amassing around the crossing to sneak into Pakistan which has already announced that it was not in a position to accept more refugees, according to security officials.

Already around three million Afghan refugees have been living in Pakistan, some for more than three decades, since the invasion of their country by the erstwhile USSR in 1979.

Pakistan has also expressed the apprehension that the unplanned pull-out of the foreign troops could lead to anarchy in the war-ravaged country. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan was not “responsible or orderly” and warned that the “consequences of abandonment” could lead to a civil war in the war-ravaged country if the West failed to engage with the Taliban.

Qureshi warned of potential “anarchy” and a resurgent threat of terrorism and said there was a failure to listen to Pakistan’s concerns about ending the war in Afghanistan and as a result the withdrawal was not “responsible or orderly,” he said.

Crowds seeking to flee Afghanistan gathered on its borders while long queues formed at banks as an administrative vacuum after the Taliban’s takeover left foreign donors unsure how to respond to a looming humanitarian crisis.

With Kabul’s airport inoperable after the pull-out of the American troops, private efforts to help Afghans fearful of Taliban reprisals focus on arranging safe passage across the land-locked nation’s borders with Iran, Pakistan and central Asian states.

The new, Taliban-appointed head of Afghanistan’s central bank has sought to reassure banks that the new rulers wanted to have fully-functional financial system but has so far provided no detail how the funds would be managed to sustain the system without the immediate foreign donations. The acting central bank governor, Haji Mohammad Idris, met members of the Afghanistan Banks Association and other bankers this week, and told them that the Taliban viewed the banking sector as imperative, official sources said.

Uncertainty over the Taliban’s relationship with the international community is raising doubts over its ability to revive an economy shattered by 40 years of war and reliant on aid and foreign currency reserves, the latter largely out of reach in the United States.

The militant group which now controls the country was working to find solutions for liquidity and rising inflation, the bankers quoted Idris as saying. “They were very charming and asked banks what their concerns were,” said one of the bankers. Under the Taliban’s previous rule between 1996 and 2001, Afghanistan had little functioning banking sector and although a handful of commercial banks retained licences none were operational and few loans were made.

Idris, a Taliban loyalist who has no formal financial training or higher education, was appointed to head the central bank last week. He and his team did not tell the bankers how much cash Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), the central bank, had access to, nor did they give any indication about how the Taliban would approach its relationship with the United States, one of the bankers said. The central bank provided liquidity to banks in recent days, said two of the bankers, with one adding that DAB paid a portion of the amount each bank requested. “They invited banks to send requests they may have via official letter,” said one of the bankers.

It appears unlikely that the militants will get quick access to most of the roughly $10 billion in assets held by DAB, which are mostly outside of the country. “Around 80% of transactions done by banks are in dollars, so it’s very critical the new government should make the relationship with the US,” said the banker. Another banker who attended the meeting said an initial rush by customers to access bank accounts after the Taliban captured Kabul had eased slightly.

A key priority for the central bank was now to have its international accounts “unblocked” and get access to its reserves, to allow it to keep enough money circulating. “We are in close contact and negotiations with the central bank,” said the banker.

Banks have mainly re-opened this week, but are operating with limited services, including $200 weekly limits on withdrawals and few wire transfers amid liquidity worries and correspondent banks cutting ties, say bankers. Idris also offered reassurances about banks’ female staff, telling them that the Taliban was not planning to stipulate whether they could employ women or not, said one of the bankers.

Women account for around 20% of staff in some banks, but some have stayed away from offices amid concerns the Taliban rulers would repeat the stance of their previous government before 2001 when women were not allowed to work. As a result of the assurances, some banks were inviting their female staff back to the office, the banker said.

As the Taliban on Thursday said they were close to forming a new government, dozens of women held a rare protest for the right to work under a new regime that faces enormous economic hurdles and deep public mistrust.

Speculation is rife about the make-up of a new government, although a senior official said Wednesday that women were unlikely to be included.

Senior leader Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai — a hardliner in the first Taliban administration – said while women could continue working, there “may not” be a place for them in the cabinet of any future government or any other top post.

In the western city of Herat, some 50 women took to the streets in a rare, defiant protest for the right to work and over the lack of women’s participation in the new government. “It is our right to have education, work and security,” the protesters chanted in unison. “We are not afraid, we are united,” they added.

It was also for the first time under the Taliban rule that women athletes took to the field on Thursday when two Afghan taekwondo athlete Zakai Khudadadi competed in the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, becoming the first female Afghan to do so since Athens 2004, after a secret international effort to help her get out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The 22-year-old and her compatriot Hossain Rasouli had arrived in Tokyo on August 28 for help to leave Kabul after the Taliban swept to power.

An international effort to evacuate members of the Afghanistan national girls’ soccer team, along with dozens of family members and soccer federation staff, suffered a crushing setback last week after a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed over 200 Afghans and 13 US service members during a harrowing airlift.

Robert McCreary, a former congressional chief of staff and White House official under President George Bush who has worked with special forces in Afghanistan said the mission — called Operation Soccer Balls — is working with other countries, with the hope the girls will eventually settle in the U.S. He said Australia, France and Qatar have expressed interest in helping. He also urged the Taliban to ease the exit for the group, saying it would create goodwill.

The president of the U.N. Security Council said the U.N.’s most powerful body would not take its focus off Afghanistan this month and “the real litmus test” for the new Taliban government would be how it treated women and girls. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason of Ireland said the protection and promotion of human rights for women “must be at the very heart of our collective response to the crisis.”

While the US said there was no rush for recognizing the Taliban government, the United Kingdom said although the U.K. won’t soon recognize the Taliban’s government, ‘there is an important scope’ for dialogue with Afghanistan’s new rulers.

“There’s no rush to recognition from the United States or any country we have spoken with around the world. It will be very dependent on their behaviour and whether they deliver on what the expectations are of the global community,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.

But in Doha at a joint press conference with his Qatari counterpart, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab said he supported the ‘engagement’ with the Taliban to test the group’s wide-ranging promises. He cited the Taliban’s pledges to protect freedom of travel for Afghans and foreigners, to form an inclusive government and, significantly, to prevent international terrorist groups from using the war-scarred country as a base.

Raab said: “In all of these areas, we will judge them by what they do, not just by what they say.”

Raab is in Doha to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with Qatar’s emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, his office said.

“The prospects of getting Kabul airport up and running and safe passage for foreign nationals and Afghans across land borders (are) top of the agenda,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Raab will also meet his Qatari counterpart and the British embassy to Afghanistan, which has temporarily relocated to Qatar, his office said.

Qatar is working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul’s airport as soon as possible, its foreign minister said on Thursday, urging the hardline Islamists to allow Afghans to leave. More than 123,000 foreign nationals and Afghans fled the country in the airlift operation, but many more are desperate to depart.

“It’s very important… that the Taliban demonstrate their commitment to provide safe passage and freedom of movement for the people of Afghanistan,” Sheikh Mohammed said.

Qatar is “engaging with (the Taliban) and also with Turkey if they can provide any technical assistance”, he added.

The Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla arrived in the United States capital on Wednesday to hold meetings with senior officials from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.

Shringla is among the few foreign officials to be in town and the highest level Indian official to meet top officials of the Biden administration after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that brought down curtains on the 20-year-old war.

Meanwhile, China on Thursday reacted positively to a Russian proposal to convene a new meeting of the ‘Extended Troika’ on Afghanistan in Kabul – the first such conference since the Taliban seized power last month.

Russia plans to convene a new meeting of the ‘Extended Troika’ on Afghanistan in Kabul after the resumption of commercial flights, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency Sputnik.

The “extended Troika” meeting was earlier held in Qatar on August 11. Talks under the format had earlier taken place on March 18 and April 30.

Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Wednesday discussed the current security environment in Pakistan and the region during a phone call, the Pentagon said.

This was the first phone call a top U.S. official has had with Pakistan’s Army chief after the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan on August 31.

Hundreds of American troops are currently in Pakistan capital Islamabad on their transit from Afghanistan to the U.S.

The United Nations’ food stockpiles in Afghanistan could run out this month and there is a critical need for $200 million to provide food to the most vulnerable, a senior UN official has warned.

Deputy Special Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov said that at least one-third of the conflict-torn country’s population currently is “not sure that they will have a meal every day or not. This is what is going on.”

“By the end of September, the stocks which the World Food Programme has in the country will be out. We will be out of stock. We will not be able to provide those essential food items because we’ll be out of stock,” Alakbarov told reporters during a virtual press briefing from Kabul.