US says Afghan embassy, now out of money, will close down
The Afghan embassy in Washington will shut down in the coming week amid severe financial pressure and cut off from the new Taliban government in Kabul, according to a senior US State Department official.
Its diplomats, holdovers from the former US-backed government, could be under threat by the ruling Taliban if they return home. And now, the official said, they have 30 days to apply for residency or temporary humanitarian parole to remain in the United States before being deported.
Although they would not be sent back to Afghanistan, it is unclear where else the diplomats would go, added the official, according to The New York Times.
Nearly 100 diplomats currently work at the embassy in Washington or at Afghan consulates in Los Angeles and in New York, the NYT said. Around one-fourth of them have yet to apply to remain in the US along more than 100,000 other Afghan applicants who are hoping to remain in the country in a process that has overwhelmed the Biden administration since Kabul fell in August.
Meanwhile, the diplomats no longer have access to several hundred thousand dollars in funding after banks froze their accounts, the US official said.
"The Afghan Embassy and consulates are under severe financial pressure. Their bank accounts are not available to them," the official told AFP.
He added, "We have no intention of accrediting diplomats who are appointed by the Taliban at this time."
The official said the State Department had "now made arrangements in cooperation with the Afghan Embassy to facilitate an orderly shutdown of operations in a way that would protect and preserve all diplomatic mission property in the United States until operations are able to resume."
The Afghan government owns three properties in the United States: a stately Colonial Revival embassy building in Washington, a consulate in Los Angeles and the Long Island residence of the consul general in New York. For now, the State Department will oversee their maintenance and security.
The Taliban, who had previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, took power again on August 15 as the US was in the middle of a chaotic troop withdrawal. The group announced the formation of a caretaker government on September 7. No country has yet recognized their rule.
The Taliban have not fully gained control of diplomatic missions set up under the former government and many of the diplomats remain loyal to the old pro-Western government.
The accrediting of Taliban-appointed diplomats, whether it will happen or not, is "something that would happen much further down the road, if we were moving toward recognition of them officially as the government of Afghanistan," the official said.
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