The International Coalition to Defeat Daesh / ISIS, the group of more than eighty countries created in September 2014 to combat this Islamist terrorist organization, has pledged this Monday to keep their efforts alive.
The attack on Thursday at the Kabul airport, which claimed itself by ISIS-K (the Afghan branch of the Islamic State) and killed at least 170 people, has once again placed a threat believed to be subjugated to the forefront, after the defeats inflicted on ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
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The US bombs an ISIS car with explosives in a possible attack at the Kabul airport
“We will continue to cooperate closely, under the auspices of the coalition, to effectively counter this dangerous threat. We will use all national elements of power -military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic and police- to ensure the defeat of this brutal terrorist organization, "says the statement published by the US State Department on its official website. Washington and London have been two of the most combative Western governments against an organization that emerged in the heat of Al Qaeda, which it surpassed in cruelty and territorial ambition. The British Government has made it official the use of the term
daesh
, as its enemies refer to ISIS, due to the pejorative phonetic connotation it has for Arabic speakers.
The British Foreign Minister, Dominic Raab, in the eye of the hurricane for the slowness and negligence with which he reacted during the first days of the crisis in Afghanistan - he chose not to return from his vacation - is now trying to correct his mistakes with an international agenda full of appointments and events, to try to demonstrate a leadership that until now has been conspicuous by its absence. “The UK stands firm and united with our coalition partners in mourning the killings in the terrible
Daesh
bombing
at Kabul airport, and to make clear our collective unwavering determination to combat
Daesh
networks.
with all possible means, wherever it acts ”, Raab assured on his Twitter account at the end of the virtual meeting held this Monday by the members of the G-7, NATO, Qatar and Turkey.
Beyond the firm messages issued against ISIS from Washington and London (both deplored victims, military and civilian, at Kabul airport), the priority of both governments now focuses on forging an international consensus on how to it must respond to - and deal with - the new Taliban regime established in Afghanistan.
And, above all, in finding a way to pressure the country's new leaders to allow safe exit corridors for all foreigners and Afghans who have been left behind and to receive authorization to obtain refuge in third countries.
The United Kingdom and France have joined forces to present a joint resolution to the United Nations Security Council on Monday.
They ask the Taliban to support a security zone, run by civilian personnel, at Kabul airport.
From there, the civilian evacuation operation that came to an abrupt end last Saturday could be reactivated.
To carry out the proposal, the consent of Russia and China, permanent members of the Council with the right of veto, and very suspicious of what they consider to be Western interference in Afghanistan, must be obtained.
Moscow and Beijing have decided to safeguard their own interests and relations with the new Taliban regime, apart from the international community.
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Paradoxically, as his minister prepared to deploy this new diplomatic strategy at the United Nations, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, James Cleverly, cast a handful of skepticism against the proposal. “We have to be realistic. Some approaches are very difficult, practically impossible, without a significant military deployment on the ground. Without this guarantee, there can be no presence, neither of the UN nor of diplomatic personnel, ”Cleverly assured the BBC on Monday.
British military personnel left Afghanistan this Sunday, after ending Operation Pitting, the evacuation effort that has led to the departure of about 15,000 people from the country. The British Government estimates that there are barely a thousand Afghan citizens who collaborated with international forces for two decades and must have also left the country. However, many critical voices, both in the British Conservative Party and in the Labor opposition, denounce that Foreign Affairs was unable to manage the avalanche of emails with personal details of Afghans in danger, and that there are close to 9,000 those with more or more links less stable with British institutions lagging behind.
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