Taliban hand out passports again in Afghanistan

The authorities talibanas from Afghanistan announced this Saturday the resumption of passport handover in Kabul, offering hope for those who feel threatened by Islamists to leave the country.

Thousands of Afghans are also seeking to escape the economic crisis that threatens to transform into a great humanitarian crisis, in a context of interruption of international aid since the arrival of the Taliban to power.

“Passport delivery will start tomorrow (Sunday) in three regions, including Kabul,” Alam Gul Haqqani, head of the Afghan passport service, told reporters.

Closed since the Taliban came to power in mid-August, the service briefly reopened in October, but the flow of demands caused technical problems, forcing the Taliban to stop deliveries after a few days.

All the technical problems are solved, the biometric devices are fixed, “said Alam Gul Haqqani on Saturday, adding that first passports will be given to those who have already placed the order.

The new demands will be accepted from January 10, he said.

Many Afghans who wanted to go to neighboring Pakistan for medical treatment were also blocked due to the lack of a valid passport.

“My mother has health problems and we needed to go to Pakistan for a long time, but we couldn’t do it,” Jamshid, who like many Afghans has no last name, told AFP.

“We are happy … to be able to get our passports and go to Pakistan,” he added.

Called to return

The resumption of the handover of passports constitutes a test of the goodwill of the Taliban, who pledged before the international community to let their compatriots leave if they so wish.

According to the UN, Afghanistan faces “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world”, which should worsen with the northern winter. For its part, the UN World Food Program (WFP) warned of the arrival of an “avalanche of famine.”

The Taliban demand that funds be released to relaunch the economy and fight hunger. In Kabul, many people have to sell their goods to feed themselves.

On Saturday, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban government, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, again asked the UN agencies to “pressure” the United States to release the US $ 9.5 billion in reserves of the Afghan Central Bank that it has frozen.

He also called on Afghans living abroad to return to the country now that the war is over.

“We invite and encourage everyone to return to Afghanistan, including our political opponents,” he said during a reception in Kabul on the occasion of “International Migrants Day.”

“I ask the United States to support us by giving our people a good life here in Afghanistan instead of expelling them from the country,” he added.

Over the past 40 years, more than six million Afghans fled the country to escape war and economic and humanitarian crises. Most of them live in Iran and Pakistan, neighboring states.

So far, no country has recognized the rule of the Islamists, who took power in Afghanistan in August, following the departure of US troops who fought the Taliban for twenty years.

International flights, mainly to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, resumed in September at Kabul airport.