Political | Process

Some ambassadors nominated by the former, US-backed government in Kabul voiced criticism of the country’s new leaders.

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• The Taliban recently sent an envoy to the United Nations, but the global body refused to accept it. The diplomat, Suhail Shaheen, protested that the seat of Afghanistan “should be held by the current government in Afghanistan, which has sovereignty and authority over the entire country.”

• Elsewhere, the Taliban are trying a less direct approach. In China, where the ambassador to the former government has resigned, the Taliban are trying for an ally to become the de facto head of the embassy.

• In Italy, a pro-Taliban diplomat tried to enter the embassy but was blocked by an appointed ambassador to the Afghan Republic in a confrontation that ended in a fistfight and intervention by Italian police.

• One of the few places where the Taliban has successfully removed former government diplomats is neighboring Pakistan, where diplomatic staff working for the Taliban are already present in embassies and consulates.

• This is not the first time that competing claims have been made about who will represent Afghanistan. During the first Taliban regime in the 1990s, only three countries—Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—recognized their government and diplomats as legitimate.

• Elsewhere in embassies, diplomats serving under the government of Mujahideen leader Burhanuddin Rabbani – who was president before the Taliban takeover in 1996 – were allowed to continue their roles. The United Nations, then, as of now, has refused to take a position representing Afghanistan, allowing the current envoy to remain in place.

• However, there is a difference. While Mr. Rabbani continued to present himself as Afghanistan’s legitimate leader after his escape from Kabul to the country’s far northeast, Mr. Ghani has made no such claim. Mr. Ghani’s vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who is also in exile, has declared himself interim president, but his claim is not accepted by most other officials in the former republic and has made no serious effort to create a unified alternative. has gone. Taliban.