International Pressure Help Raise ISIS Morale, Taliban: World Must Work Together

Illustration of a senior Taliban official. (Twitter/@QaharBalkhi)

JAKARTA - Afghanistan's foreign minister appealed to the world for good relations with the country on Monday, but avoided making firm commitments on education for girls, as international demands.

Nearly two months after the former Western-backed government collapsed and insurgent forces swept through Kabul, the new Taliban government has been pushing to build ties with other countries to help prevent a catastrophic economic crisis.

"The international community needs to start cooperating with us," acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said at an event organized by the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

"With this we will be able to stop insecurity and at the same time we will be able to engage positively with the world."

However, the Taliban have so far refused to give a reason to allow girls to return to secondary school, one of the main demands of the international community after a decision last month that schools above sixth grade would only reopen to boys.

Muttaqi said the government of the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban was moving cautiously, had only been in power for a few weeks and could not be expected to complete reforms that the international community had not been able to implement in 20 years.

"They have a lot of financial resources and they have strong international backing and support, but at the same time you are asking us to do all the reforms in two months?" he says.

Afghanistan's new government has been under constant criticism for its approach to girls' education, which is seen as one of the few positive benefits of two decades of Western involvement in Afghanistan.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Taliban had broken promises to guarantee the rights of women and girls and there was no way the economy could be repaired if women were barred from work.

On the occasion, Muttaqi repeated calls for the United States to lift the block on the more than US$9 billion of the Central Bank of Afghanistan's reserves held abroad, although he said the government would still have its own revenue from taxes, customs and agricultural tariffs if the funds remained frozen. .

He stressed that Taliban forces have full control over the country and are able to control the threat from Islamic State militants who have claimed a series of deadly attacks in recent weeks, including last week's bombing of a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Kunduz.

"The Daesh (ISIS) issue has so far been controlled by the Islamic Emirate," he insisted, using a derogatory term for the radical Sunni group, but added that international pressure on the government was helping ISIS morale.

"Instead of pressure, the world should work with us," he concluded.