Russia ready to host Taliban, opposition forces to prevent war in Afghanistan

The Russian envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov on Tuesday said that Moscow is ready to receive delegates of both Afghanistan’s authorities and opposition forces to prevent war in Afghanistan, in case they are interested.

In an interview with Russian news agency TASS, Kabulov said that Russian officials have repeatedly declared they will host such meetings, reported Tolo News.

“As for visits to Moscow by representatives of both the new Afghan authorities and opposition forces, we have repeatedly confirmed our readiness to demonstrate hospitality if they are interested in that,” Kabulov told TASS.

Meanwhile, a source close to National Resistance Force (NRF), the only defiant group who are fighting the Taliban told Tolo News that Russia had mediated a meeting recently between the Islamic Emirate and the Resistance Front, in which Ahmad Massoud met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, first deputy of the PM, in Moscow.

The meeting has not been officially confirmed yet, and Islamic Emirate officials have neither confirmed nor denied the meeting.

“There is no official information on hand about the trip of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar to any country,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.

This unconfirmed report follows a meeting of the Islamic Emirate delegation led by Amir Khan Mutaqqi with Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the Resistance Front, and Ismail Khan, a jihadi leader, in Tehran.

However, the negotiations between NRF and the Taliban ended without any results in Tehran.

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After the fall of Kabul on August 15, NRF remained the only defiant group led by Ahamd Masoud, the son of late former Afghan guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who are resisting the Taliban.

In November 2021, the Afghan National Resistance Front said that more and more people were joining the organization to fight the Taliban rule, with members of the NRF gathering in Panjshir, Kapisa, Parwan, Badakhshan, Balkh, and Baghlan provinces, as per the media outlet.

Recently Norway hosted meetings between a delegation of the Islamic Emirate and Afghan women and as well as representatives of several countries in Oslo, and there were reports released that Abdul Ghani Baradar had left Kabul for Moscow to meet Ahmad Massoud, however, the Russian ministry of foreign affairs denied the meeting, reported Tolo News.

• MENA