A coalition of civil society organisations in Austria has warned, on the fifth anniversary of Afghanistan\u2019s fall to the Taliban administration, that expanding \u201ctechnical\u201d cooperation with the group could lead to its political legitimisation and de facto recognition.<\/p>\n
In a press conference on Tuesday, 20 August, the coalition called on Austria and the European Union to adopt a principled, coherent and long-term policy toward the Taliban administration, rather than offering political and diplomatic concessions.<\/p>\n
According to the groups, increasing political pressure on the Taliban administration and supporting the people of Afghanistan against the systematic violation of their rights, especially the rights of women and girls, should be at the centre of Europe\u2019s policy. Civil society representatives in Austria, including members of the Afghan diaspora, stressed that the repression of the people of Afghanistan should not be reinforced through political concessions.<\/p>\n
The groups also expressed concern about Afghanistan\u2019s security situation and the presence of terrorist and extremist networks in the country. They urged Europe to strengthen support for international accountability mechanisms and impose targeted sanctions on Taliban officials, including over providing sanctuary to terrorist organisations.<\/p>\n
Austria is a member of the European Union and has an Afghan migrant and diaspora community. In recent years, how European countries engage with the Taliban administration, especially in humanitarian and technical areas, has been one of the topics of discussion among civil society groups and human rights defenders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Austrian civil society groups warn that expanded technical ties with the Taliban could amount to political legitimisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550","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=19550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}