Turkey and Qatar pamper the Taliban with Kabul airport
Turkey and Qatar negotiate with the Taliban for the reopening of the Kabul airport: they have offered technical support and, according to the Agi, even 30 million dollars. Here are the latest news
Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said Thursday that the country is negotiating with the Taliban together with Turkey to offer technical support for the reopening of Kabul airport, currently unreachable by commercial or military flights. .
The Taliban, who have taken control of Afghanistan, have repeatedly said they will not accept any military presence in the country after August 31, the date of the full US withdrawal. On the other hand, commercial flights are unlikely to decide to reach Kabul without strong reassurances on safety, even given the recent attack by the Islamic State of Khorasan .
1 MILLION EUROS FROM THE NETHERLANDS
Also on Thursday, the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, Sigrid Kaag – who was in Ankara on a diplomatic mission – said that the Dutch government would like to contribute to the effort of Turkey and Qatar with a loan of 1 million euros, to be spent for the resumption of evacuations from Kabul airport. If necessary, the Netherlands is also willing to send personnel.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE TECHNICIANS AT KABUL AIRPORT
On Wednesday, a team of technicians from Qatar landed in Kabul to assess the resumption of activities at the international airport, after the damage that the structure suffered in the days of the evacuations of the United States and NATO allies.
The AFP agency writes that a final agreement has not yet been reached between the Qatari government and the Taliban, and that there are ongoing discussions related to security and operations management. The goal, as an anonymous source explains, is the resumption of flights from Kabul to allow both the arrival of humanitarian aid, the continuation of the evacuations, and the guarantee of freedom of movement for the Afghans.
30 MILLION FROM QATAR AND TURKEY
The AGI agency reports the words of Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy head of the Taliban political commission, to the Afghan broadcaster Tolo News , to which he said that the Kabul airport will be operational again in a couple of days thanks to the 30 million dollars made available by Qatar and Turkey.
THE DECLARATIONS OF THE TALEBANS
A few days ago, Stanikzai had also announced on television that in an unspecified future, Afghan citizens in possession of valid documents will have the freedom to move in and out of Afghanistan at any time.
More recently, on Monday, Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said the group is able to control the Kabul airport and does not need "anyone's help for security and administrative control."
But managing an airport requires technical skills that the Taliban do not possess, even given the flight from Afghanistan of thousands of skilled employees. In addition to the structure, critical infrastructures, such as the flight control terminals, which are difficult to repair in the absence of the necessary expertise, have also been damaged in the chaos of recent weeks.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/aeroporto-kabul-turchia-qatar/ on Fri, 03 Sep 2021 14:03:36 +0000.