Taliban threatens to disrupt elections in Afghanistan with attacks, warns citizens to stay away or risk being potential targets

Kabul: While the US is negotiating with the Taliban in Qatar for Afghanistan’s peace and stability, the terrorist organisation has issued a threat to the government and people of the country. ‘The people of Afghanistan must not participate in the next month’s state elections, and stay away from gatherings and rallies of the election campaign or risk becoming targets,’ Taliban threatened.

Through a handout, the Taliban criticised the elections saying, ‘The elections in Afghanistan are nothing but a conspiracy to deceive the ordinary Afghan people. They are being held to satisfy the ego of a limited number of sham politicians.’ Even though the Taliban has not named any leader, the criticism is believed to be directed towards President Ashraf Ghani.

At the same time, the Taliban stated that they did not approve of the elections and warned the Afghan people not to participate in the polls. ‘If you don’t want to be attacked by your fellow compatriots, refrain from voting and campaigning as the locations will be targeted,’ the Taliban warned.

After issuing threats to attack the polling booths and elections campaigns, the Taliban lashed out even at the United States, which backs the Afghanistan government. ‘The United States should accelerate the process for bringing the mandates from the current negotiations into effect rather than supporting elections in Afghanistan. Moreover, the United States should make sincere efforts to establish peace in Afghanistan’, Taliban retorted.

On Monday, the eighth round of talks between the Taliban and the United States began in Doha, capital of Qatar. In the previous round of negotiations, the United States had announced that the Taliban had accepted their proposal. The US Special Representative, Zalmay Khalilzad has thus claimed that the current round of talks would be a success. Also, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claimed that the peace talks would soon attain success.

Previously, the Taliban had declared that the terror attacks would stop if the US completely withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. The terrorist organisation had even accepted the US proposal to come to a compromise with the ruling Ghani government and take part in the democratic government. Nevertheless, the US demands made in last week’s meeting, appear to have been rejected by the Taliban with its latest threat.

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