Afghanistan: Taliban promise amnesty policy in press conference


Either the Taliban have changed or they have simply eaten a lot of chalk: the militant Islamists wanted to share power in Afghanistan, the movement’s spokesman promised at the first press conference after the capture of Kabul. Other political forces will also be allowed to participate in power in Afghanistan, said spokesman Sabihullah Mujahid. “When the government is formed, everyone will have a part in it.”

Otherwise, the Taliban, feared for their brutality and their draconian Sharia regime, appeared to the outside world to be conciliatory and willing to compromise. They wanted to give women rights, let them work and even accept them in government offices. However, only within the framework of Islamic Sharia laws, as the spokesman immediately restricted.

He announced that they wanted to build “an Islamic government” together with other groups in the country. Taliban deputy chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is considered the political head of the Islamist movement, arrived in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south of the country on Tuesday. He had previously negotiated with the United States in Doha in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Observers suspect that Baradar could take on an office that corresponds to that of a head of government. On the other hand, the highest leader of the Islamists, the “leader of all believers”, Hibatullah Achundsada, has not yet appeared publicly.

Promise of a general amnesty

The appearance of the Taliban spokesman at the press conference in Kabul reinforced the impression that the Islamists are making good weather for now. But probably only to reassure the world community after their surprising victory and not to risk the billions in international aid money. In addition, the radical Islamists have to be very careful. They must not incite their defeated Afghan opponents to renewed military resistance and thus risk the danger of a new civil war.

This is probably one of the reasons why the representative of the Islamist militia assured the opponents of the war and supporters of the overthrown Kabul government that no revenge would be taken. On the contrary: there will be a comprehensive amnesty for the opposition. This pardon will also include those who had worked for the foreign troops, i.e. the former translators, assistants and scouts of NATO.

Seriously or not, this seems to primarily serve to reassure the international community. The acute threat to former members of the NATO armed forces is being bitterly debated in the USA and Europe. The governments of the NATO countries, including the German ones, are being accused by their own public of having neglected their Afghan employees, despite the Taliban victory that was looming against the background of the US withdrawal, and of abandoning their Afghan employees to the revenge of the Islamists. The Taliban must fear that these governments will cut all aid money.

The Taliban had always threatened the army translators with death as “traitors”. The Afghan government soldiers and police officers were also regarded as traitors worthy of death. But now the spokesman said that all soldiers who had fought against the Taliban in recent years would be pardoned.

Mujahid assured that the security of the foreign embassies was guaranteed. Nothing would happen to anyone in Afghanistan. Even the unloved journalists were courted: the media shouldn’t worry. They just have to remain impartial and, as he restricted, their reports should not contradict “Islamic values”.

After their rapid conquest and the flight of President-elect Ashraf Ghani, the Taliban effectively took power on Sunday. Many Afghans now fear a return to the reign of terror of the Islamists of the 1990s, during which women, for example, were excluded from public life and the Islamists’ ideas were enforced with barbaric corporal punishment.

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