Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has dropped the reference to Taliban in a recurring paragraph, nearly two weeks after the militant group took over Afghanistan. UNSC's statements called upon Afghan groups advising them not to support terrorists operating on their territory.
India, which assumed the rotating Presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the month of August, signed off on the statement and issued it in its capacity as the chair for this month.
The statement, issued by India's Permanent Representative at the UN TS Tirumurti on behalf of the UNSC on August 27, reproduced a paragraph from its earlier statements on Afghanistan. "The members of the Security Council reiterated the importance of combating terrorism in Afghanistan to ensure the territory of Afghanistan should not be used to threaten or attack any country, and that no Afghan group or individual should support terrorists operating on the territory of any country," the paragraph read.
However, the paragraph dropped the reference to the Taliban, which was there in the first statement issued by the UNSC on August 16 after the fall of Kabul to the militant group.
Syed Akbaruddin, India's permanent representative at the United Nations till April last year, pointed out the difference in the two statements and said "the 'T' word is gone".
The latest statement issued by the UNSC, which is being chaired by India for the month of August, condemned the "deplorable attacks" near the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26.
The attacks, which were claimed by Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), an entity affiliated with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), resulted in the death of over 170 people, including 13 US servicemen.
India on Friday said that the exact number of its citizens remaining in war-torn Afghanistan was unknown.
