Taliban officials have met with U.S. officials to hold talks in Doha, the capital of Qatar, with the aim of "opening a new page" in relations between the extremist organization that controls Afghanistan and Washington.
Talks that began yesterday are the first between the parties since the last U.S. forces were evacuated from the country in early September, after two decades of military presence in the country.
Provisional Taliban Foreign Minister Mula Amir Khan told Doha media that his men had asked the Americans to lift economic sanctions on the organization and allow it access to Afghan central bank funds.
Khan also said the organization had asked the United States to deliver vaccines to Corona for the country’s residents.
Sources present at the talks said that despite the Taliban's hope for easing sanctions for the country whose economy depends on foreign aid, there is still a deep chasm between the Americans and Afghans, largely due to the organization's unwillingness to be flexible on human rights, education and issuing visas to US allies.
The Taliban also met with EU representatives in order to obtain humanitarian aid for the country, which is suffering from a severe drought and economic collapse following the extremist organization's takeover of power and the closure of borders. On Friday, a senior U.S. secretary of state announced that granting legitimacy to the caretaker Afghan government was out of the question.
The talks come amid a deadly bloodbath in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in which nearly 50 members of the country's Shiite minority were killed.
The Islamic State organization in Horsan province, an Afghan branch of ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack over the weekend, citing the name of the suicide bomber who carried out the attack.
Members of the Shiite minority are discriminated against by the Taliban and harming them is an embarrassment to the organization, which is forced to show that it is working to protect the Shiite population in the country.
