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Abdullah claims Taliban responsible for the stalled peace talks
Abdullah Abdullah, Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) said Tuesday the Taliban has brought the intra-Afghan negotiations to a standstill in Doha, Qatar.
Addressing a meeting on the occasion of the inauguration of the HCNR’s Media and Public Awareness Commission, Abdullah stated that no negotiations have been held between the peace teams for about three weeks.
Abdullah also said no decision could be made behind the scenes, and “the Taliban can put whatever they want on the negotiating table with the I.R delegation.”
“If it is about speeding up the process [Peace process], it is our responsibility. But we are currently in a situation that although the negotiating party has not interrupted the negotiations, no negotiations are underway currently,” Abdullah pointed out.
Abdullah meanwhile also raised the issue of an interim government which has been proposed by some Afghan politicians as an alternative in order to kickstart the stalled peace talks.
He said that nowhere in the world has it been proven that peace can be maintained by merely establishing an interim government.
“Peace is not a personal issue for some people; the Taliban should sit around the negotiating table and raise their issues. A transitional government is not the goal of a desirable future that is acceptable to all,” Abdullah noted.
This comes after reports emerged about a week ago that the Taliban’s negotiating team has not fully returned to the talks tables since the three-week December break.
Some sources have stated that the Taliban is waiting to see whether the US goes through with the troops withdrawal by May 1 as per the Doha agreement before they return to the peace talks tables.
No decision has however been taken as yet regarding the troop withdrawal issue but Biden administration officials have confirmed the agreement is being reviewed.
High-ranking US officials have been briefed on the deal and on Thursday last week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad.
“Great meeting with Ambassador Khalilzad to discuss the way forward in Afghanistan: continuing to protect the US against the threat of terrorism, achieving a just and durable political settlement there, and cementing a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,” Blinken said in a tweet.
Biden’s Administration has retained Khalilzad, who has for the past two years been the driving force behind the Afghan peace process, to continue the Afghan peace mission.
In a series of tweets, Khalilzad stated that he has briefed Blinken on the Afghanistan peace process “in the context of our continuing policy review.”
“We discussed the focus on our conditions-based strategy, one that brings peace to Afghanistan, secures a stable future for its citizens, and prevents anyone from using Afghanistan to threaten the United States and our allies,” Khalilzad said.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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