The European Union announced Thursday to restore
"a minimum presence"
of its personnel in Kabul in order to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, a country ravaged by war which was reconquered last summer by the Taliban.
“Our minimal presence in Kabul should in no way be considered as recognition”
of the regime in power, wrote in a press release Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell.
"This has been clearly notified to the authorities"
of the Taliban regime, he adds.
Read alsoIn Afghanistan, the Taliban unable to bring order and justice
A little earlier the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs had mentioned, through the voice of a spokesperson speaking on Twitter, the reopening of an
EU
"embassy" , with
"a permanent presence in Kabul"
to the first time in five months. A European diplomat, joined by AFP in the Afghan capital, had qualified by speaking of a diplomatic presence having taken the name of Delegation of the European Union, installed since the beginning of the week. According to Peter Stano,
“the EU has started to re-establish a minimum presence of international staff in its Delegation”.
The objective, he says, is to
“facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and monitor the humanitarian situation”.
No country has yet recognized the Taliban government. The international community is waiting to see how these Islamist fundamentalists intend to govern Afghanistan, after having largely trampled on human rights during their first passage to power between 1996 and 2001. If the Taliban claim to have modernized, women remain largely excluded from the government jobs and girls' secondary schools mostly remain closed.
Several countries, including Pakistan, Russia, China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, kept their embassies open in Kabul after the Taliban victory in mid-August, but did not recognize their government.
Western diplomats had started to evacuate their personnel from the first half of 2021, when American troops began their operations to withdraw definitively from Afghanistan.
A withdrawal that ended in late August with the chaotic evacuation of 120,000 people after the country's lightning conquest by the Taliban.