Blinken says Qatar manages US interests in Afghanistan – international

Foreign Secretary Anthony Blingen announced this Friday (12) that the Taliban would come to power after Qatar closed the embassy in Washington and that Qatar would manage US interests in Afghanistan.

Welcoming his Qatari counterpart to Washington, Blingen announced that he would sign an agreement “to establish Qatar as a US defense force in Afghanistan.”

In this way, the Qatari force in Kabul would have the Department of American Interest.

“I express how grateful we are for your leadership and support in Afghanistan, but I emphasize that our relationship is much broader than that,” Blinken told Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.

Qatar has played a key role in diplomacy and expulsions from Afghanistan following the US decision to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

In the final days of the US presence, half of the 124,000 Westerners and Afghan allies who left Afghanistan fled through Qatar.

Prior to that, Qatar held talks between the United States and the Taliban, which led to an agreement in February 2020 to withdraw US troops.

Since the return of the Taliban to power, the operations of the US embassy in Kabul have been diverted to Qatar.

The US closed its embassy in Kabul, one of the world’s largest diplomatic headquarters, in August after it became clear that a Western-backed government was collapsing. The diplomats destroyed important things and lowered the flag.

Despite the critical period of the Taliban regime of 1996-2001 and the war years, US officials are cautiously optimistic about their relationship with Islamic fundamentalists, and have largely kept their promise to allow people to leave the country.

But the United States has rejected the government’s immediate recognition or reopening of its embassy in Kabul, hoping that the Taliban will respect other obligations such as respecting women and banning al-Qaeda from operating in Afghanistan.