“There is no point in all this. It is not the first time America has brutally killed the Afghan people. America has been doing this for the last 20 years. This is American bigotry, and the true face of America has been exposed in front of our people and the world,” Mujahid told China Global Television Network (CGTN), emphasizing that America should compensate its atrocities against the Afghans wherever it has committed them.
On October 14, the United States' military offered to pay unspecified bribes to the relatives of 10 Afghan nationals who were killed in a botched U.S. drone attack in Afghanistan last month.
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The drone attack in Kabul on a car in mid-September killed seven children and three adults, including the driver, as American forces were completing their withdrawal from the country.
Pointing to Russia’s hosting of a third conference involving Afghanistan’s neighbors and the new interim rulers on Wednesday, the Taliban spokesman said Moscow organized the meeting with the purpose of showing the “Taliban’s pursuit for international recognition.” He added that Russia seeks to establish peace in Afghanistan but its reservations should be cleared. “We participated in this conference, so that the world would accept us, and our important issues could be discussed with the world.”
Attending the third meeting of the Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan in the Russian capital were representatives from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as well as a high-level delegation representing the Taliban.
A concluding joint statement said, “The core burden of post-conflict economic and financial reconstruction and development of Afghanistan must be shouldered by troop-based actors which were in the country for the past 20 years.”
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies temporarily ousted the Taliban. The group, however, rallied and began staging a presence on the biggest part of the country’s soil.
Earlier this year, the Taliban initiated a forceful offensive to renew their rule, which the U.S. facilitated by announcing a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan in April.
Mujahid also rejected reports about the death of the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada two years ago. “He’s alive and absolutely well, he’s in Kandahar, he is leading us.” Akhundzada, he said, would appear within the next days and the world would be able to see and hear him.