A senior UN representative believes that embassies in Kabul should be reopened despite the Taliban

Dec. 25 () –

The deputy special representative of the United Nations General Secretariat for Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, has assessed that Western countries should reopen their embassies in Kabul despite the fact that this means a sort of recognition of the Taliban, in power for years and medium.

Potzel, who was German ambassador to Afghanistan between 2014 and 2016, believes that a diplomatic presence in Kabul would allow “a better assessment of the situation” instead of doing it from a distance. “It is difficult to do it from Doha or Berlin,” the United Nations representative assessed in an interview for RND.

“Germany and other Western countries have interests in Afghanistan, we must not forget that,” said Potzel, who thought it would be a good idea for more Western countries to once again have representation in the Afghan capital.

However, Potzel has qualified that having a diplomatic legation there does not necessarily imply “recognition of the Taliban regime”, but rather an interest in a stable Afghanistan in which the Islamic State and drug trafficking networks do not have an easy time developing, he explained.

“The international community has an interest in combating terrorism. It has in ensuring that drugs are not cultivated or traded. It is in its interest that the people of the country are offered perspectives so that a wave of refugees like the one we saw in 2015 does not repeat itself. All these are interests for which, in my opinion, it is worth fighting and being present in the place,” he stressed.

“The humanitarian situation is precarious. Winter has arrived. People need fuel, they need something to eat, they need medicine. (…) On the one hand, we don’t want to support the regime, and on the other, we don’t want to let people down “, Has expressed.

Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021 after the departure of the United States and its allies, Western countries have rushed to close their embassies and evacuate their staff, leaving behind dozens of Afghans who helped with them.

Up to now, no country has recognized the de facto government of the Taliban, which, after initially offering an alleged attempt to deny that a fundamentalist regime as oppressive as the one between 1996 and 2001 was going to be restored, in recent months have initiated a series of measures that are reminiscent of those years, such as not allowing women to access education.

Potzel himself has criticized some of these “draconian” restrictions that the Taliban have imposed against women, such as being prohibited from traveling without the company of a male family member, or from attending parks, gyms or public baths. “I don’t see that the Taliban have changed,” he has said.