Australia yesterday abruptly announced that it would shutter its embassy in Afghanistan on Friday, expressing fears over the “increasingly uncertain security environment” in Kabul as foreign troops withdraw.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the facility would close as an “interim measure ... in light of the imminent international military withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
The US and allied forces are in the final stages of withdrawing their remaining troops from Afghanistan, ending the US’ longest-ever war, but heralding an uncertain future for a nation in the tightening grip of Taliban militants.
Photo: AFP
About 80 Australian troops are also leaving, and without that small contingent and the larger US force as backup, Morrison said there was an “increasingly uncertain security environment.”
“The government has been advised that security arrangements could not be provided to support our ongoing diplomatic presence,” he said in a statement.
The elected government in Kabul and Afghan security services remain fragile, despite two decades of foreign capacity building, and their success is far from assured without continued support from the US military.
Western diplomats and military officials have been scrambling to work out how to provide security for their future civilian presence in Afghanistan with fears growing of a Taliban comeback.
The Taliban yesterday pledged to provide a “safe environment” to foreign diplomats and humanitarian organizations.
“[We] will not pose any threats to them,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said.
When the Taliban seized control of Kabul ahead of their brief time in power in the 1990s, the group entered the UN, where they abducted and brutally murdered the country’s former leader Najibullah Ahmadzai.
In 1998, the Taliban oversaw the killing of 10 Iranian diplomats at their consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
“The only incentive for foreign embassies to remain is the humanitarian work that they are involved in, but if their personnel are endangered, then there is no point in remaining here,” a foreign defense official based in Kabul said.
“Several other embassies will follow Australia in the coming weeks or months,” the official said.
Nishank Motwani, an Afghanistan specialist based in Australia, said the Taliban would interpret Morrison’s announcement as a victory.
“The Taliban will see it as ... a clear sign that other NATO and non-NATO partner countries are likely to shutter their diplomatic missions because of the US’ decision to exit Afghanistan and the security vacuum its departure will inevitably create,” he said.
Violence in the country has soared in the past few weeks and Afghan forces have clashed with Taliban fighters not far to the east and west of Kabul.
US President Joe Biden has said all US troops would leave by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks that sparked the US-led invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban.
It was not clear whether there was a specific threat made against the Australian embassy.
The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it hoped Australia would review its decision, adding that it was committed to offering security to diplomatic missions.
Key among the concerns of foreign embassies is making sure Kabul airport — the exit route for Western diplomats and humanitarian workers if security breaks down — can function securely.
The sudden closure of the Australian embassy surprised some experts.
“It is not set in stone that this is going to be a Taliban roll-up in the next few weeks,” said John Blaxland, professor of international security at the Australian National University.
“This is not Saigon 1975,” he added, a reference to the dramatic helicopter evacuation from the roof of the US embassy in South Vietnam, as the Viet Cong and regular communist military forces seized the city.
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