A top spokesman for the triumphant Taliban movement said Tuesday a new Afghan government will be formed in very short order, even as celebratory gunfire marked the final exit of U.S. troops and diplomats from Kabul a day earlier.
The U.S. and nations around the region are watching closely to see if and how the radical Islamist movement has changed in the 20 years since being driven from power by a U.S.-led invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Some senior Taliban officials have been on what analysts say is a PR drive to calm fears that the country’s new leaders plan to re-establish the strict Islamist state that suppressed women and civil liberties when they were last in power.
Anas Haqqani, who has emerged as an unofficial spokesman for the Taliban leadership in Kabul, told the Al Jazeera news website Tuesday in an interview that much of the work in forming a new government has already been done.
“The government will take shape in the following few days,” Mr. Haqqani, whose father founded the violent, Taliban-allied Haqqani Network, told Al Jazeera. “We have covered about 90 to 95% and we will announce the final outcome in the following few days.”
But despite promises from the Taliban to form a more “inclusive” government, Mr. Haqqani said it was still too early to say who would serve in the new government Cabinet.
Mr. Haqqani also insisted the new Taliban-led government would confront Islamic State-Khorestan Province, the IS jihadist offshoot based in Afghanistan that carried out a suicide bombing last week at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service personnel and some 170 Afghan civilians.
“We fought with the world empty-handed and came this far. We can get rid of such a group, as we have in the past,” he said. “This is not something to be stressed about.”