‘Narco-state will emerge underTaliban’

Pic/AFP

The Taliban are not going to ban the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan, which will lead to the emergence of a narco-state, said French political scientist Olivier Roy.

Roy, who is also the scientific adviser of the Middle East Directions programme at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in Italy, said: "We find ourselves in the situation we were in the 1990s, with the phenomena of the brutal advance of the Taliban. The reason is simple: the army is not fighting, and the Taliban make agreements with the local authorities. They will arrive in Kabul, the army will try to resist, in my opinion it will not resist, we are heading towards the fall of Kabul."

When asked about Kabul proposing a sharing of power and whether it was too late for that, Roy said, "Completely. But that was never relevant, the Taliban never intended to share power."

US withdrawal a mistake: UK Def Secy

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the US decision to pull its troops out of Afghanistan was a "mistake", which has handed the Taliban a "momentum" in the country. Wallace said the withdrawal agreement negotiated in Doha, Qatar, by the administration of former US President Donald Trump was a "rotten deal". "We will all, in the international community probably pay the consequences of that."

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