KABUL: Afghanistan will resume issuing passports to its citizens, its interior ministry announced, in a first under the country’s new Taliban government.
Ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosti said it will provide applicants with documents physically identical to those issued by the previous government,
which issued passports under the name of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
The issuance of passports has been suspended since the Taliban took control of Kabul nearly two months ago.
Khosti said all the female employees of the passport department had been asked to return to their jobs. Other ministries have told female employees to remain at home while new working arrangements are established.
Alam Gul Haqqani, the passport office’s acting head, as saying that it would issue between 5,000 and 6,000 passports a day — and female staff would be employed to handle the processing of female citizens’ documents.
The Taliban retook control of the Afghan capital Kabul in mid-August, and crowds of thousands flocked to the city airport to try and get out of the country.
Afghanistan’s new rulers allowed the United States and its allies to fly their citizens, as well as some Afghans with immigrant visas, out of the country in a massive and chaotic evacuation effort.
On August 24, however, the Taliban said Afghans were no longer allowed to go to the airport.
