Taliban say US violates pact, calls for end to sanctions

The Taliban accused the United States of violate the peace agreement signed last year in Doha and called on Joe Biden’s government to immediately lift sanctions against senior officials in the new Taliban cabinet.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most wanted list for terrorism, and his family are “part of the Islamic Emirate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said in a statement on Thursday. “Likewise, in the Doha Agreement, all officials of the Islamic Emirate without exception were part of the interaction with the United States and should have been removed from US and UN blacklists, an assertion that is still valid. “

Haqqani, who has been appointed Afghanistan’s new acting interior minister, is among two-thirds of the newly released cabinet members on either UN or US sanctions lists, which risks to complicate any action to cooperate with the Taliban, especially since President Joe Biden has urged militants to cut all ties with terrorist groups.

“We urge that these incorrect policies be reversed immediately through diplomatic interactions, ”Mujahed added.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the administration Biden watches over new government and that “all legitimacy, all support, will have to be won”.

The new Taliban Prime Minister, Mullah Mohammad Hassan, is also sanctioned by the UN with his delegates, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi.

Baradar has long been the public face of the Taliban. He oversaw and signed the peace deal with the Trump administration in Doha, Qatar, in February last year, which paved the way for the departure of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Under this agreement, the United States should have lifted all sanctions against the Taliban by August 27, 2020.

The Afghan central bank on Thursday asked all banks in the country to freeze the accounts of all officials working for the US-backed government of former President Ashraf Ghani. The banks were instructed to share the list of these accounts with Da Afghanistan Bank, according to an order signed by interim central bank director Mohammad Idris, to which Bloomberg News had access.

Ghani and several senior officials fled Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15. He then apologized for fleeing the country and leaving the Afghans without stability.