Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers inisted on Tuesday that all foreign evacuations from the country must be completed by Aug. 31 while Western leaders said they would press the hardline Islamists to allow people to leave after that.
Kabul airport has been mired in chaos as foreign citizens and Afghans fearing reprisals rush to leave after the takeover of the capital by the hardline Islamist Taliban on Aug. 15.
President Joe Biden, who said last week U.S. troops may stay past Aug. 31 to evacuate Americans, will stick to a Pentagon recommendation to remove the troops by that date as long as the Taliban enables the United States to complete its evacuations, three U.S. officials said.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was increasing concern about suicide bombings by Islamic State militants at the airport. One official said it was no longer a question of if, but when, militants would attack and the priority was to get out before it happened.
The Taliban told the thousands of Afghans crowding into the airport in the hope of boarding flights that they had nothing to fear and should go home.
"We guarantee their security," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference in the capital, which Taliban fighters seized on Aug. 15 from the Western-backed government after two decades of war.
As he spoke, Western troops were working frantically to get more foreigners and Afghans onto planes and out of the country.
Mujahid said the group had not agreed to an extension of the Aug. 31 deadline and called on the United States not to encourage Afghan people to leave their homeland. He also urged foreign embassies not to close or stop work.
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she had received credible reports of "summary executions" of civilians and Afghan security forces who had surrendered. The Taliban has said it will investigate such reports.
G7 COMMITMENT TO AFGHANISTAN
Leaders of the G7 major industrialized nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - met virtually to discuss how to complete the chaotic withdrawal and deal with the Taliban now that they have seized power.
They said they would remain committed to Afghanistan and back the United Nations in coordinating immediate humanitarian help in the region, which faces a new influx of refugees.
The talks did not result "in new dates" for the end of the evacuation mission, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, though there were intensive discussions on whether a civilian-operated airport in Kabul could be used after Aug. 31.
The leaders agreed on the need to press the Taliban to allow people to leave after Aug. 31, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
CIA Director William Burns met Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday, two U.S. sources told Reuters. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said he was not aware if Baradar had met the CIA chief.
Countries that have evacuated nearly 60,000 people over the past 10 days were rushing to complete the job, a NATO diplomat told Reuters. "Every foreign force member is working at a war-footing pace to meet the deadline," said the official, who declined to be identified.
RED LINE
The U.S.-backed government collapsed as the United States and its allies withdrew troops 20 years after they ousted the Taliban in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants whose leaders had found safe haven in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Leaders of the Taliban, who have sought to show https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-seek-present-moderate-face-they-take-control-afghanistan-2021-08-15 a more moderate face since capturing Kabul, have begun talks on forming a government that have included discussions with some old enemies, including former president Hamid Karzai.
It appointed a former Guantanamo detainee, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, as acting defence minister, the Qatari-based Al Jazeera news channel said, citing a source in the Islamist movement.
Many Afghans fear reprisals and a return to a harsh version of sharia (Islamic law) that the Taliban enforced when in power from 1996 to 2001, in particular the repression of women.
Mujahid said there was no list of people targeted for reprisals and the Taliban were trying to come up with a procedure so women could return to work.
Bachelet said the United Nations would be watching closely.
"A fundamental red line will be the Taliban's treatment of women and girls," she told an emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
STARVATION RISK IN AFGHANISTAN
The G7 leaders were expected to consider whether to recognise a Taliban government, or alternatively renew sanctions to pressure the movement to comply with pledges to respect women's rights and international relations.
"The G7 leaders will agree to coordinate on if, or when, to recognise the Taliban," said one European diplomat.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said after the talks that if huge funds for Afghanistan were going to be unfrozen, the country could not be a breeding ground for terrorism.
The Executive Director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, said the politics needed to be decided fast because the combination of conflict, drought and the COVID-19 pandemic meant that 14 million Afghans could soon face starvation.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin was interested in serving as a middleman in resolving the crisis along with China, the United States and Pakistan.
At the same time, he said, Russia opposes the idea of allowing Afghan refugees to enter the former Soviet region of Central Asia or having United States troops deployed there.
"If you think that any country in Central Asia or elsewhere is interested in becoming a target so that the Americans could fulfil their initiatives, I really doubt anyone needs that," Lavrov said during a visit to Hungary.