Turkey wants to control Kabul airport

While the United States claims that its withdrawal from Afghanistan is more than halfway through and that it could be completed by July, all its allies are struggling to follow suit. All but one. Turkey has just stepped up within NATO to stay in the country, in exchange for taking over the Kabul airport.

The proposal, which has already been put on the table in Brussels, will be reiterated on Monday at the first meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his US counterpart, Joe Biden. The Turkish Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, has clarified that the permanence of his five hundred soldiers is subject “to political, financial and logistical conditions.”

The Islamic State kills 10 deminers of a British NGO in a “Taliban attack”, according to Kabul

Among the first would be a withdrawal of US sanctions for the acquisition of Russian antiaircraft batteries. Likewise, Ankara believes that the presence of its military could deter further embassy closures. The last one, that of Australia.

However, the position of the Taliban is not clear and they have already backed away, in April, from a peace conference held in Istanbul. On Tuesday, when the Government of Kabul and the Islamic Emirate met again in Qatar, for the first time since April, Turkish diplomacy was also present.

However, the prospect of Turkish air access control to Kabul should put Beijing, Moscow and the Central Asian republics on alert. Countries all of them with hundreds or thousands of citizens fighting under the shadow of Turkey in the last jihadist stronghold in Syria.

Read also

Jordi Joan Banos

Also, as the final departure of foreign troops approaches, fighting between Afghans is intensifying. With the culmination of increasingly repulsive terrorist attacks, with no other apparent objective than to question or hinder said withdrawal. These return to splashing neighbors like Pakistan, where yesterday they killed two policemen in a vaccination campaign against polio.

The night before last it was his turn
to a British organization, HALO, dedicated to demining. Ten of its Afghan employees were shot dead and 16 wounded in an Islamic State assault in the northeast province of Baglan.

HALO, which has been in Afghanistan since 1988, claims to have helped clear 80% of its mined area. One hundred and forty of his employees were in the bedrooms when at ten o’clock five or six masked men jumped over the walls.

“They asked if there were any Hazara (Shiite minority) and who our boss was. They killed him on the spot. Then the one who asked said to kill us all ”, recalled a wounded man from the hospital.

The Kabul government was quick to blame the Taliban insurgency, in a war that is also propaganda. However, the president of HALO, Ja-mes Cowan, denied this on the BBC and clarified that it was the local Taliban – who had already denied their authorship – who put the command to flight, to an area they do not control. Late yesterday, IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Baglan is mostly Tajik, with some Uzbek district, where the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan became strong after its expulsion from Pakistan in 2014. Shortly after, a split, Yundalah, aligned itself with the Islamic State.

–