Former US diplomat: Sending diplomats back to Afghanistan would confer legitimacy on IEA

Amid reports of the US mulling the reopening of its consulate in Afghanistan, a former US diplomat and an Afghan diplomat have said that sending US diplomats back to Afghanistan without any concessions from the Islamic Emirate would not be neutral.

Annie Pforzheimer, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, and Ashraf Haidari, Afghan ambassador to Sri Lanka (appointed by the former government), said in an opinion in The Hill that an operational US embassy in Kabul would lead to other countries opening their missions, serving as an endorsement of the IEA.

“After all, an embassy is not a newspaper bureau of independent foreign correspondents; it is an ecosystem of diplomats whose presence would confer an unearned legitimacy on the Taliban (IEA) and require a strengthening of ties,” they wrote.

They said that given ongoing security threats, U.S. diplomats would need IEA guards on the compound and armed IEA escorts to move around; those diplomats’ meetings with Afghans would be as honest as a visit to “a Soviet-era Potemkin village”.

According to them, so much has been lost since the “ill-fated” Doha Agreement was signed four years ago.

“The only lever of international suasion remaining rests with diplomatic recognition and paths to power and money, which the Taliban want to possess without changing their ideology or repression,” they wrote.

They called on the U.S. and like-minded countries to strengthen their commitment to the Afghan people, rather than to concede to the IEA.

They said that the future UN special envoy’s nearly impossible job is to be the voice of a unitary international position on Afghanistan.

Earlier, VOA reported that the United States is reviewing the possibility of reopening its consulate in Afghanistan under the Islamic Emirate rule without formally recognizing it as a government.

US officials, however, rejected the report.