After taking power in Afghanistan, the militant Islamist Taliban want to officially represent the country on the UN stage. In a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Chan Motaki asked for the right to speak at the current 76th General Debate of the UN General Assembly. According to the United Nations, the letter had been sent to the UN headquarters by the Foreign Ministry of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.
In the letter, the Taliban argue with the actual balance of power: “Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has been deposed and (countries around the world) no longer recognize him as president,” it says. In fact, after their brilliant triumph in the face of the disastrous withdrawal of troops by the NATO states, the Islamists are de facto the rulers of the country. Germany, the USA and other countries see the Taliban as a point of contact and ruler after the collapse of the Afghan army and President Ghani’s flight. But they do not recognize it as a legitimate government.
UN ambassador not a member of the Taliban
According to the United Nations, the letter from the Taliban Foreign Ministry also states that the Taliban want to replace the previous Afghan UN ambassador, Ghulam Isaczai, with their own spokesman, Suhail Shahin. The UN Secretariat forwarded the letter to the responsible certification committee for examination.
This certification committee consists of representatives from nine member countries – the USA, Russia, China, Sweden, Namibia, the Bahamas, Bhutan, Sierra Leone and Chile – and, according to UN spokesman Farhan Haq, has the power to decide which representatives and thus which leaderships of States are recognized at the United Nations. “It is not the UN that recognizes governments, that is what their member states do,” said Haq.
In fact, there have been cases in the history of the United Nations in which UN officials were not connected to the rulers in power in their country. The Taliban controlled Kabul from the mid-1990s to 2001 – at the UN, however, Afghanistan was still represented by the ambassador of the previous government because the community of states did not recognize the Taliban and has not done so to this day.
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