The spokesman and head of foreign relations for Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Massoud said the Biden administration has not been in touch with the group since Taliban insurgents seized control of Afghanistan this month.
“I tried to reach out. Unfortunately, we haven’t received any type of response from them,” said Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front. “We don’t see an interest at the moment for the resistance.”
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Nazary told the Washington Examiner that the front’s stronghold in northeastern Afghanistan’s Panjshir province could be used as a haven for people stuck in Kabul, where suicide attacks outside the international airport on Thursday killed at least a dozen U.S. military personnel and scores of Afghan civilians.
He said it had been several months since he last spoke with the White House and characterized the silence as reflecting a “lack of interest” from Washington.
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“They know I’m here. But we haven’t received any interest. We haven’t received any invitation. We haven’t received any requests,” Nazary said. “It is surprising to us that this is the only resistance against the Taliban, the only force left against terrorism, the only force that’s providing safe haven for thousands … but they haven’t given this option any consideration.”
Nazary suggested that groups unable to leave the country could be sent to Panjshir.
“We believe the latest development with the suicide bombings makes our case stronger because we’ve been warning the current administration, we’ve been warning all our Western partners … that international terrorism is stronger compared to 2001,” Nazary said. “It shouldn’t be ignored.”
The resistance could prove an essential partner to the United States’s counterterrorism efforts inside the country, he added.
“These are the last allies the United States has. If these allies are not on the ground, it will be very difficult to fight terrorism inside Afghanistan in the future,” he said. “There is still a threat. … This is just the beginning.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked on Wednesday whether the Biden administration had been in touch with Massoud and whether President Joe Biden might support them “or are they on their own?”
Psaki responded: “It’s a great question. I’ll have to talk to our team on the ground to see if there’s any more specifics we can provide.”
The White House did not respond to a request for further details on Thursday.
The Biden administration has been in close contact with Taliban leaders as it completes its evacuation from Kabul’s airport ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.
Resistance and Taliban leaders completed a first round of talks on Wednesday toward a negotiated governance agreement.
“We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation,” Massoud told Reuters this week.
The two sides agreed to cease fighting until the start of a second round of talks.
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Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan told the Washington Examiner last week that U.S.-trained Afghan forces dissolved amid Taliban advances.
“Afghan forces appear to have essentially — are no longer operating as a coherent entity,” Sullivan said, but he did not answer a question regarding the future of the U.S. relationship with the army that it spent tens of billions of dollars to train.
