The Government of the Czech Republic has announced that it will close its Embassy in Afghanistan on January 1, 2023 in the absence of progress in the security situation since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
Czech State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Radek Rubes, told the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that the decision has been conveyed by the portfolio holder, Jan Lipavsky, adding that activities will be transferred to the Czech Embassy in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
He also stressed that Prague plans to close its embassy in Mali and its consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu, as reported by the Czech news agency CTK. The authorities are also considering creating a consulate in the Indian city of Bombay.
Rubes explained that the closure of the Embassy in the Malian capital, Bamako, is related to the end of the activities of the Army of the Czech Republic in the framework of the training mission of the European Union (EU) in the African country due to the tensions with the junta.
«This mission ends before the end of the year and the soldiers are withdrawing from Mali due to political turbulence,» he noted, while lamenting that Mali «is totally distancing itself from Europe and European values.»
The governments of France and the rest of the European countries participating and collaborating with the ‘Barkhane’ operation and the Takuba Force, as well as Canada, announced in February the withdrawal of their forces from Mali, where they were deployed to help Bamako in the fight against jihadism.
Tensions have been running high in recent months over the military junta’s announcement to lengthen the transition process to four to five years and to postpone elections scheduled for February, amid cross accusations between Paris and Bamako over counter-terrorism efforts and the deployment of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, owned by a Russian oligarch.
