NBC, 8 September 2021
AAN’s Kate Clark comments on the new Taleban cabinet in this analysis:
A State Department spokesperson said it had noted the lack of inclusivity, but Kate Clark, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy research organization based in Kabul,said it was not surprising.
“The Taliban never gave any hint that they wanted to include people other than themselves in the government,” she said by telephone Wednesday.
“Anyone who thought they might make concessions or try to appease international opinion, or indeed, the opinions of other Afghans, to be honest, I think is a bit delusional,” she added. (…)
China hoped that the new regime “will listen widely to the opinions of all ethnic groups and factions during the interim government, echoing the aspirations of its own people and the expectations of the international community,” he said.
Clark, of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said she did not believe this was likely, because in the Taliban’s eyes, they had “just achieved a tremendous victory.”
“They defeated a superpower, they are in power, they have God on their side and they are filling all the posts with their own people,” she said.
Without international aid, “the Taliban are going to face a really hard time,” she said, adding that governing will be “extremely difficult” without that.
And the Afghan people would be the ones to suffer, she said.
“You’ve got a drought this year, you’ve had a pandemic and now suddenly you’ve got this freezing of aid,” she said. “That’s a huge crisis.”
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This article was last updated on 1 Oct 2021
