Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy economic chief of the Taliban administration, recently held a meeting in Kabul with Shahir Al-Taqi, CEO of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Delta International petroleum company. What drew the most attention, however, was the presence of Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. special envoy for Afghan peace\u2014an appearance that has sparked both domestic and international questions and reactions.<\/p>\n
According to a statement released by the Taliban administration, the meeting focused on discussions about the \u201cexploration, extraction, and expansion of gas pipelines\u201d in Afghanistan. Delta International is considered one of Saudi Arabia\u2019s major oil firms and reportedly expressed interest in investing in Afghanistan\u2019s oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n
The Taliban-run Ministry of Mines and Petroleum also announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the company. The agreement includes potential projects such as the long-stalled TAPI gas pipeline, designed to transport Turkmen gas through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. The project had been halted under the previous Afghan government due to security concerns, but the Taliban claim they have resumed work on it.<\/p>\n
Khalilzad\u2019s participation in a meeting of such economic and political significance\u2014under the framework of the Taliban\u2019s governance\u2014has raised serious questions about his current engagement with the group. U.S. officials have previously stated that Khalilzad\u2019s recent visits to Kabul have been private and bear no ties to the United States government. However, Khalilzad has not yet commented on his role or the nature of his presence at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Experts warn that signing economic agreements with regional companies without financial, legal, and regulatory transparency\u2014especially under a regime widely considered to be illegitimate\u2014not only clouds the future of Afghanistan\u2019s natural resources but could also undermine national interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taliban official meets Saudi oil exec and ex-U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Kabul, sparking questions over political and economic implications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}