I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. When the Taliban retook Afghanistan in August twenty twenty one, the country's embassy in Canberra stayed open. It's an embassy in exile staffed by diplomats from the former administration and advocating
on behalf of Afghans here in Australia. Until now, there have been seventeen embassies of it's kind around the world in countries that don't formally recognize the Taliban, but recently Germany decided to expel its embassy's exiled staff and instead invite representatives of the Taliban regime. Today Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton on diplomacy in exile and life under the
Taliban for the people of Afghanistan. It's Wednesday, October fifteenth, So Karen, in Canberra, there is an office, an embassy for Afghanistan, but it does not answer to the Taliban.
So what is it and who works there? Yeah, it's a bit confusing for people.
I think who hear that there is an embassy for Afghanistan and assume that it's a Taliban embassy.
But you're right, this is an unusual situation.
It's staffed by diplomats who worked for the previous administration in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over in twenty twenty one. The ambassador, Wachidula Wassi and a skeleton staff are still operating out.
Of the embassy. They're doing basically consilar work.
They're trying to support Afghans in Australia who are trying to keep a connection with Afghanistan with family there, and they had been still issuing passports and the like. So it's an unusual arrangement. It's an embassy in exile, and it's one of a number of them around the world that have continued to operate for the last four years.
So how sustainable is that current? Can these embassies stay open all over the world if they don't represent the people who now rule Afghanistan.
Well that is something that these governments are now grappling with. In these ambassadors and their staff are sort of in limbo that had their bank accounts frozen. They can't access any salary or money from back home, so they are stranded here and they've been doing their work with the
support of their host governments. But in July of last year, the Taliban issued a statement saying they were no longer going to recognize passports or other paperwork that had been issued by these posts, because there were some embassies that had recognized the new regia and were working for the Taliban in various countries, but there was something like seventeen of them that had not, and Australia was on the
list of those countries. After that statement was issued, the British and Norwegian governments closed those exile Afghan missions, and the Norwegians ultimately also accepted a Taliban representative. And then recently Germany followed suit and the Afghan exile diplomats in Born have all resigned because the German government has brought into diplomats representing the Taliban regime, facilitated their entry to the country, recognizing them as the legitimate representatives of Afghanistan.
Right, And so does it seem like Australia might follow suit?
Well, the Australian government has provided me with a statement that says, quote the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan remains open, that they have no plans to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan and that they have not quote directed Ambassador Wasi to close the embassy unquote and the statement says, quote, we will keep working closely with Ambassador Wassi. Australia does not regard the Taliban as the legitimate representation of the Afghan people. Our focus
is on the Australian Afghan community now. They made the point that the Australian Passport's Office and the Department of Home Affairs were continuing to assist Afghan Australians with travel documents who were seeking to travel or seeking to lodge
visa or citizenship applications. And they also emphasize the support that Australia has given to the Afghan people two hundred and sixteen million dollars in humanitarian assistance, particularly focused on the needs of women and girls there, and the government also has provided another one million dollars following those terrible earthquakes there. Australia has offered its support to try and
assist where it can. But there is this difficulty that countries like Australia are not recognizing the Taliban regime and not wanting that support to end up with the Taliban hierarchy rather than with the people themselves.
And it is a highly unusual arrangement to have, you know, our government continue to recognize an epathy that doesn't actually represent the government that is ruling Afghanistan.
It is, and this is where the problem lies. It's a big question of how you deal with that as
a government. Some in the government appointing to the nineteen sixty one via a Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which lays out the circumstances in which people can be appointed as diplomats on behalf of a government, and there is concern that because the Taliban regime says these people no longer represent our interests, then the diplomats can't be covered by that convention anymore now, I think interestingly, the President of the United States has said in recent weeks that he
wants the Taliban regime to hand back the Bagram Air Base north of Carble to the United States government.
We're going to keep Bagram, the big airbase, that one of the biggest airbases in the world. We gave it to them for nothing. We're trying to get it back. By the way, Okay, that could be a little breaking news. We're trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back.
Now that is the air based the Coalition forces operated out of during the decades long conflict in Afghanistan. After the terrorist attacks of September eleven, two thousand and one. But I could argue logically that you might think that if Donald Trump wants something from the Taliban, that as a deal maker, he might be wanting to find out what they want in return. And you can imagine at the very least Taliban might be saying, what we want is all these embassies.
Shut what's the Taliban saying?
This is from their ambassador and cutter about the United States. If they want good relations, investment in Afghanistan, trade, normal diplomatic relations, they are welcome. But if they entertained covetous aims whatsoever, then they speaking of the US, need to go through the history of Afghanistan once more, from the era of the British invasion down to the recent US invasion.
What the Taliban, we know, will ultimately want is for the rest of the world to acknowledge them as a legitimate government, and that is not the case at the moment, and we saw some debate at the United Nations recently about that. So they will be seeking legitimacy, And it's just interesting timing that the President of the United States has made this point recently.
Coming up, what is the international community's responsibility to the women and girls living under Taliban rule? So, Karen, You've been speaking with Afghanistan's ambassador in exile in Australia and recently there was this internet blackout across the whole country across Afghanistan that lasted a couple of days. So what is it like for him trying to understand news like that back home?
Well, it's impossible.
I mean, this has never happened before that an entire country was completely isolated from the rest of the world.
Afghanistance Doliban governments imposed and nationwide communications shut down just weeks after introducing fiber optic internet.
That ban was a telekingmunications band that covered fiber Internet but also mobile phone services, and the whole country couldn't access communications.
Well, at the moment, we don't have an official response from the town about about exactly why they're doing this.
What we do know though, is that there was a spokesperson.
But earlier in this month, one of the first provinces to have their fiber networks cut off and they talked about the fact that this had come from the Supreme Leader and that this was about, in their words, curbing evils now.
And that goes to every level, so banking and travel services, you know, aviation, everything had to stop because they couldn't access the internet all.
The way down to the very local level.
And the regime has been so strict, particularly on women, that a lot of people at the local level, the household level, have been relying on internet access to get news to and from the rest of the world. Some women in particular have been accessing education services that they can't get in their own country anymore.
And that was all cut off. Now.
It was partly restored after a day or so, but not completely really. What was restored was the mobile phone services, but that's not a stable internet connection like a fiber optic services. So the ambassador provided a statement talking about this situation, saying it amounted to the collective punishment of the Afghan people, that it was a breach of human rights, and he said that it was quote aimed at suppressing the voices of millions of citizens, blocking online education and
access to information, concealing their crimes. And he's talking about the Taliban bear and isolating an entire nation from the world.
And Karen, it's been four years now since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. Just how dramatically has the country changed in that time.
It's changed in every way.
If we remember that to that first Trump administration and the deal that was being negotiated for the coalition forces to withdraw, there was all this talk about.
Taliban two point zero. But Taliban had changed.
They weren't the draconian regime that would punish women.
You know, they were enlightened.
It would be different now, and of course that was rubbish. It's worse than ever. But Taliban have forbidden women in Afghanistan from talking to each other. But they's just been a series of increasing le draconian restrictions since the group seized power three years ago. Women are subject to worse restrictions than ever, completely banned from education and for most employment as well, and subject to horrifically extreme restrictions on
their movements and activities. In general, they have no future in a country, and we know there's a violent crackdown.
We know that anyone against the regime suffers punishment.
People have tried to flee but in recent times there've been moves by some surrounding countries to send people back, and there's now this spear that there will be a greater push for repatriation of Afghanist who fled and they might be forced to go back and this is not a regime that they want to live under.
So a lot has changed.
There is an argument that the world has not moved quickly enough to respond and that they've changed their focus. And we know there've been other wars have emerged since we've got the problems in the Middle East, We've got the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the tension has gone off Afghanistan and this has been allowed to occur and get worse and worse over the last four years.
And Karen, Countries like Australia have a measure of responsibility for the position that Afghanistan is in today, but to provide any aid or support they do have to work with the people who are running the country, who are, as you say, responsible for some pretty reprehensible policies, particularly when it comes to women. So how do countries like Australia trying and walk that moral type rope.
That's the really big question.
You know, there's constant pressure from advocates for the Afghan people on these other governments to not give in, to not recognize to Taliban, because as soon as that sort of dan wall is broken, then that is they argue tacit acknowledgment and acceptance of the kinds of behaviors and
activities that they engage in. But there was quite a vivid example of the change in the country in the shape of an event that the exiled Afghan ambassador and colleagues hosted in August this year to mark the one hundred and sixth anniversary of independence.
From British rule.
They had a flag raising ceremony in a number of speeches, and among the speakers was a young triple Olympic athlete, Kima Yusafi, who's a sprinter who competed at the Paris Olympics with five other exiled athletes under the Afghan flag, and she gave a very passionate speech which was translated into English, and she spoke about the veried dreams of thousands of Afghan women and girls and said that here in exile they carry a responsibility under that flag to
be the voice of the women and girls left in Afghanistan and to keep their hopes alive. And she talked about every small step being a long path to freedom, that sport has taught her there's no true finish line and that every ending is simply the beginning of another race. So a demonstration of the kind of resilience and optimism they have to retain to think and hope that they can make change in Afghanistan.
Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks Ruby.
Also in the news, eight organizations are calling for full access to the Gaza strip amid the first phase of the peace agreement between Hamas and Israel.
US President Donald Trump.
And Arab leaders met in Egypt to cite a cease fire deal as the last living Israeli hostages were reunited with family, and some Palestinian prisoners returned to the West Bank. United Nations Children's Agency UNISEF says it has thirteen hundred trucks of supplies ready to enter from Egypt and Jordan and is calling for all crossings into Gaza to be opened. And Communications Minister Anika Wells has announced a national advertising campaign for the government's social media ban.
For under sixteens.
The ban is due to come into effect on December tenth on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, x and YouTube. Anika Wells says the campaign will feature on billboards near schools, on TV, and on social media, and that the vast majority of students that she's spoken to say they're grateful for the laws. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Thanks for listening.