UK willing to engage if Taliban honor pledges

LONDON

The UK is willing to engage with the Taliban if they honor their promises of upholding human rights in Afghanistan, particularly for women and girls, and allowing safe passage to Afghans looking to leave the country, a minister said on Monday.

The British government, however, is still skeptical that the Taliban will allow safe passage to eligible people, Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly said on the BBC Breakfast program.

“If the Taliban start acting like a government, if they start facilitating both internal travel and exiting from Afghanistan, then we will engage with them on that basis,” he said.

“But, of course, what we are not able to do, what no country is ever really able to do, is give an absolute cast-iron guarantee.”

To a question, Cleverly said it is “impossible” to get an exact figure for the number of people left behind after the UK concluded its evacuation missions over the weekend.

The government will still issue travel permits to those Afghans who helped British forces and those eligible for asylum in the UK, he added.

According to some reports, there are between 800 to 1,100 eligible Afghans stuck at the airport in the capital Kabul, along with 100 to 150 British nationals who were unable to get on UK evacuation flights.

Videos posted on social media platforms have shown a number of people waving UK passports and pleading for help outside the airport, where thousands have been camped looking for a way out of Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power on Aug. 15.

Stephen Kinnock, the shadow foreign affairs minister for the main opposition Labour Party, accused the government of being “asleep at the wheel” after not evacuating nearly enough people out of Afghanistan.

He said there would have to be some sort of cooperation with the Taliban to ensure the safety of those left behind.

“We have to now face the reality, unpalatable as it is, that some cooperation is going be required. What that means is cooperation with conditions,” Kinnock said.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will use this week’s US-chaired meeting with top ministers from Turkey, Qatar, NATO, and the G7 to stress the importance of holding the Taliban to their pledge of protecting human rights in Afghanistan and allowing safe passage to people.

Uncertainty and insecurity are rising in Kabul following last Thursday’s attack, which was claimed by the Daesh/ISIS-K terrorist group and killed at least 170 people, including three British nationals and 13 US servicemen.