The Foreign Ministry in Kabul has finally ordered a change in leadership at the Afghan embassy in New Delhi. Still, the embassy employees have collectively refused to welcome the Taliban’s decision.
According to the reports, the Taliban-run Ministry of Foreign Affairs has chosen Mohammad Qadir Shah, an embassy employee previously working at the diplomatic office under the republic government, to lead the embassy.
Qadir Shah has served as the embassy’s secretary in India for the past few years.
Sources confirmed that Mamondzay had been ordered to leave the embassy and be replaced as acting chargé d’affaires by Qadir Shah, currently employed in the embassy.
However, Farid Mamundzay, who had been appointed the Afghan ambassador by the previous republic and continued in the post till now, in a Facebook post on Sunday evening that all recent “media rumours” are “baseless and rejected”.
The new development occurred while Farid Mamondzay, the ambassador of Afghanistan to India, was in London for his holidays. Meanwhile, sources said that Indian officials had asked Mamondzai to come up with an agreement with Mohammad Qadir Shah.
Farid Mamondzay and Qadir Shah are close aides to Afghanistan’s former foreign minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar and were appointed to the post when Atmar was a foreign minister in Kabul.
Corruption Charges at Embassy
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a group of representatives of Afghan nationals in India accused Ambassador Farid Mamondzay, Ziaullah Hashemi, head of the embassy’s finance and administrative affairs, and Shakib Ibrahim Ayazi, director of the embassy’s political affairs, corruption and embezzlement.
“Although the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in India has no obligation to respond to claims from unknown addresses, it assures all fellow countrymen that it has handled all its past and present affairs with full transparency to avoid the concern of its citizens,” Mamondzay said in a statement.
The statement also said that all the allegations were “baseless and rejected” and the employees in the embassy conduct work with “sincerity and commitment to the dignity and pride of their country and consider the will of their nation the criterion of past and present affairs”.
