'All Afghans' should feel secure under Taliban

(News 1st) : Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, a leading Taliban figure currently in charge of security for Kabul, has echoed the group’s claims that “all Afghans” should feel safe under their Islamic Emirate, and that a “general amnesty” has been granted across the Nation’s 34 Provinces. Speaking to Qatar based Al Jazeera, Haqqani, whose associates are also taking a leading role in establishing security in the capital, said the Taliban is working to restore order and safety to a nation that has seen more than four decades of war. “If we can defeat superpowers, surely we can provide safety to the Afghan people,” Haqqani, who is also a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war, said. Haqqani is still labelled a “global terrorist” by the United States, with a $5m bounty for him issued by the US Treasury Department in February 2011, and he remains on a United Nations terrorist list. Haqqani insists that people should not be afraid of the Taliban despite the stampedes and violence occurring from Afghans trying to leave the country from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. “Our hostility was with the occupation. There was a superpower that came from the outside to divide us. They forced a war unto us. We have no hostility with anyone, we are all Afghans,” he said. Meanwhile, Haqqani said the Taliban is working hard to try and keep other Afghans from fleeing, but that the circulation of what he says are unsubstantiated reports of abuse and violence is making it much more difficult. He says “the whole world” is trying to “deceive” the people of Afghanistan with claims that the Taliban will eventually revert to the strict, brutal rule of the 1990s, which he vehemently denies. This, he said, is why people are going to the airport, “where they are treated disgracefully”. He says the educated people who are fleeing should work to serve their country rather than going to the airport, where they will face violence, humiliation and “disgrace”. “We cannot build Afghanistan from the outside,” he said to those who are either waiting to leave or have already left.