The Taliban’s overseas minister stated Monday he held talks in Iran at the weekend with Ahmad Massoud, son of the past due mythical Afghan resistance chief Ahmad Shah Massoud, and assured his protection if he back domestic.
Massoud’s Panjshir Valley forces furnished the ultimate resistance in September to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, weeks after authorities troops capitulated.
In a video published Monday via way of means of country media on Twitter, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi stated he additionally met Ismail Khan, a Herat province warlord who surrendered to the Taliban and left the u . s ..
The Taliban had introduced Muttaqi’s departure to Tehran for talks with Iranian officers however made no point out of any plans to fulfill exiled leaders.
“We met commander Ismail Khan and Ahmad Massoud, and different Afghans in Iran, and confident them that everybody can come to Afghanistan and stay with none concerns,” Muttaqi stated withinside the video.
“It’s domestic to all, and we do now no longer create lack of confidence or different issues for everybody. Everyone can come freely and stay,” he stated.
The Panjshir Valley is famed for being the webweb page of resistance to Soviet forces withinside the Nineteen Eighties and the Taliban withinside the past due 1990s, for the duration of their first stint in power.
Its maximum respected parent is Ahmad Shah Massoud, called the “Lion of Panjshir”, who become assassinated in 2001 via way of means of Al-Qaeda days earlier than the 9/11 attacks.
His son has given that picked up the mantle, and there were reviews of him establishing a resistance with different exiled Afghan leaders.
The Massoud-led National Resistance Front has again and again denounced the Taliban — calling it an “illegitimate authorities” — however does now no longer seem to have made any bodily attacks.
Afghanistan’s former president Ashraf Ghani fled the u . s . with many pinnacle officers because the Taliban closed in on Kabul, however numerous different outstanding leaders remained — consisting of ex-head of country Hamid Karzai.
The Taliban promised a preferred amnesty to all combatants and critics after taking over, however rights companies say as a minimum a hundred human beings related to the previous regime were killed given that then.
A outstanding Afghan college professor and open critic of the Taliban become arrested in Kabul at the weekend after again and again talking out on tv towards the u . s .‘s new rulers.
The hardline Islamists have unexpectedly cracked down on dissent, forcefully dispersing women’s rights protests and in brief detaining numerous Afghan journalists.
