Tehran- IRAF- in a coordinated move, the Afghan Embassy in Canberra and the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a joint statement announcing the suspension of the embassy’s activities as of Friday (January 30). The statement said that the diplomatic mission, which is still run by diplomats from the previous government, will be suspended until further notice.
The statement emphasized that the Australian government has no plans to accept Taliban diplomats at the embassy and does not consider the group to be the legitimate representative of the Afghan people. Australia has pledged to protect the embassy’s building and assets in accordance with international law.
The Taliban’s Decision Led to the Suspension of Services
The root cause of the suspension lies in the Taliban’s decision. Since last August, the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul has declared passports and documents issued by diplomatic missions that are not coordinated with them – including the embassy in Australia – to be invalid. This decision effectively rendered the consular services of the embassy useless.
Jonathan Moy, a senior official at the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that after the Taliban’s move, continuing the embassy’s work was both a security risk and financially unsustainable.
The suspension has left the Afghan community of around 80,000 people in Australia facing serious difficulties in accessing consular services such as passports and documents. The number of Afghans in Australia has grown significantly since the 2021 census, and Australia had considered thousands of humanitarian visas for Afghans in 2023.
The Taliban has suggested that Afghans living abroad should visit their approved representatives in other countries for services; a solution that is not practical or accessible for many migrants in Australia.
As a result, with the indirect pressure from the Taliban and Australia’s decision not to engage with the group, one of the last remaining diplomatic outposts of the previous Afghan government in the West has ceased its operations, and once again, ordinary Afghans have borne the brunt of the cost.
A Chain of Embassy Closures
This move by Australia follows a similar decision by Japan last month. Previously, countries such as China and Iran had handed over Afghan embassies to the Taliban, and Russia became the first country in the world to recognize the group’s sovereignty over Afghanistan.
