Australia will close down its embassy in Kabul this week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Tuesday, citing the uncertain security environment, thus making it the first major country to shut down its mission after the announcement of foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Morrison, and his Foreign Minister Marise Payne, in a joint statement, cited the “withdrawal of foreign troops and “increasingly uncertain security environment”. The statement further reads, “The government has been advised that security arrangements could not be provided to support our ongoing diplomatic presence."

The embassy will close its operations in three days’ time. Australian officials would continue to visit Afghanistan from “residential posts” elsewhere in the region, they informed in the statement. 

Australia opened its embassy in Kabul in 2006, almost five years after the fall of the Taliban regime. The country remained among the top ten contributors of forces to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Only a handful of its troops is now left in the country, and would soon return back home. 

Soon after US President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban, the main Afghan insurgent group, has intensified its attacks against Afghan security forces across the country. 

They even attacked and tried to overrun some of the provincial capitals. Earlier this week, it attacked Mehtarlam, the provincial capital of Laghman which is around 120 km from Kabul. 

Roadside bombings, suicide attacks, and targeted assassinations have become common even in the capital. 

Already, several western embassies in Kabul have reduced their staff in the country. In the coming weeks, many more countries could close their operations there. In the absence of a peace deal between the Taliban and Afghanistan, which is nowhere in sight, there is a very real danger of the country slipping back into a civil war, just like it did in the 90s, South Asia analysts fear. 

(SAM)