newspaper reported “Washington Post“Taliban officials met with representatives of the Afghan armed opposition a few days ago in Iran.
The Taliban granted the armed opposition groups the right of safe return to the country, according to the American newspaper, which confirmed that this meeting is the first deal between the ruling movement in Kabul and the coalition of local militias that rose up following the Taliban came to power in mid-August.
However, a spokesman for the resistance groups angrily rejected the Taliban’s move, saying the meetings “did nothing” and describing the Taliban as an authoritarian regime that opposes human rights and freedoms.
He said the Taliban are not serious regarding addressing the concerns of the opposition groups who will continue to fight, according to Sajbatullah Ahmadi.
“We tried to leave the door open. The Taliban believed that we would stop our resistance if they offered us ministries, provinces and embassies. Our resistance is not to participate in a tyrannical government. Our resistance is for the people of Afghanistan,” Ahmadi told BBC Persian in an interview on Monday.
After the Taliban seized power, Massoud, the son of the late anti-Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, led a violent month-long insurgency in the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul, which has been a stronghold of the anti-Taliban opposition since the late 1990s.
The unannounced meeting came as two violent attacks in Afghanistan over the weekend – a deadly bombing in eastern Nangarhar province and protracted nighttime clashes in Kabul – highlighted persistent threats to Taliban rule from various sources.
On the other hand, the deputy spokesman for the Taliban, Bilal Karimi, said in a tweet Monday, that two senior Afghan militia leaders, Ismail Khan from the western Herat province and Ahmed Masoud from the northern province of Panjshir, met with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaki, and other officials. .
In direct statements to Iranian media, Mottaki said that they met with leaders and other Afghans who had fled the country.
“We gave them assurances that everyone can go back to Afghanistan without any worries,” he said in a video posted on Twitter by a Taliban spokesman.
He added, “We do not cause security problems for anyone… Everyone is welcome to return and live in their homeland.”
And on Saturday, the Taliban’s foreign minister was visiting Iran to discuss the issue of Afghan refugees and the growing economic crisis, in the first visit of its kind to the neighboring country since the extremist movement seized power in Afghanistan.
“The visit aims to hold talks on political and economic issues and the transit of refugees between Afghanistan and Iran,” the spokesman for the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said on Twitter.
While the gesture of Taliban leaders to travel to Iran and meet with their local armed opponents was pioneering, according to the “Washington Post”, one of those present from the resistance side said that the atmosphere in the talks held on Saturday and Sunday indicated “flexibility” on the part of Taliban officials.
“By extending an olive branch to Massoud, the Taliban are sending a message of their willingness to align themselves with a major resistance figure” with the aim of “weakening the prospects of a broader armed opposition,” said Michael Kugelman, a regional expert at the Wilson Center.
But Kugelman predicted that the Taliban would continue to struggle for local legitimacy, “which might lead to the emergence of a stronger armed opposition.”
For his part, the spokesman for the resistance Ahmadi said that the Taliban has other motives, such as trying to obtain official recognition from the leaders of neighboring Iran and trying to resolve internal tensions between moderate and extremist factions within its leadership.
In this regard, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a press conference this week, “Today, we are not regarding to recognize (the Taliban government).”
For his part, the opposition, Husamuddin Shams, told Iranian media that the Taliban delegation and the opposition discussed core issues, including women’s rights, freedom of expression, democratic rights and inclusive governance.
In recent weeks, the Taliban have imposed further restrictions on women’s rights, closed many democratic institutions and announced that they would not allow any former government official to join the cabinet.
