Five years in the cold: Afghan envoy says ‘moral obligation’ keeps embassy open half decade after Taliban takeover

Five years after the Taliban recaptured Kabul, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada remains a diplomat without a government. 

In 2019, Hassan Soroosh was sent to Canada for a three-year posting. Nearly seven years later, he is the fourth-longest-tenured resident ambassador among Ottawa’s diplomatic corps. 

“It’s been very challenging,” Soroosh told The Hill Times during a Sept. 2 interview at Afghanistan’s quiet Argyle Avenue embassy. 

“We’ve had to make sure that the embassy remains open because of the fact there is a need for consular services. There is a need for advocacy efforts,” he said. “Policy engagement has remained very important.” 

“For that reason and that context, we see that as a moral obligation to see that the embassy remains open,” he said.

While some countries have transferred embassies to reflect Afghanistan's current structure, many others have refused to recognize the Taliban—Russia is the only country to formally recognize the Taliban as the Afghan government. Since the fall of the Afghan government in 2021, Canada has not recognized a new regime in Kabul, where its embassy remains shuttered. 

“The Taliban must be held accountable for their actions. Canada will not support the normalization of relations until demonstrable progress is made on human rights, inclusive governance, and the protection of fundamental freedoms,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand (Oakville East, Ont.) and Secretary of State for International Development Randeep Sarai (Surrey Centre, B.C.) said in an Aug. 15 statement marking the five years since the fall of the Afghan government. 

Soroosh said the Afghan embassy has scaled back operations, with a focus on the diaspora community in Canada and on advocacy for the people of Afghanistan. He said that the mission is financed through fees collected from consular services. 

After the Afghan embassy in the United States closed in 2022, Soroosh’s mission also began providing consular services for Afghans south of the border. 

“Our missions—including our embassy and two consulates in Toronto and Vancouver—have continued to provide consular services to the large and growing diaspora in North America, not only in Canada, but also in the States,” he said. “We are very much reliant on consular revenues to fund our activities.” 

“We are trying to make sure that our fellow Afghans abroad are not disadvantaged by the situation in Afghanistan because they need a lot of consular services, including passport extensions, documents, attestations and certifications, powers of attorney, birth certificates, and many other legal and administrative matters,” he said. 

In 2024, the Taliban announced that documents issued by embassies of the former government—including the Afghan Embassy in Canada—will no longer be accepted, and that the Afghan foreign ministry “bears no responsibility” for them, according to an Associated Press report. 

“As long as there is a need for our operations, we are very much committed to continuing our work,” he said.

He said that there has been “no change” in Canada’s approach to the Afghan mission and its operations. 

“The approach here remains the same,” he said. 

A remnant embassy 

Soroosh said the revenues generated by consular service fees have allowed some of the embassy's activities to continue, but noted that the mission has been downsized by "almost" 80 per cent since 2021. 

“We have a much smaller team now,” he said, remarking there is just him, as well as four others who work part time. 

The latest Global Affairs Canada’s (GAC) inventory of foreign diplomatic representatives in Canada only lists Soroosh and Afghanistan’s consuls general in Toronto and Burnaby, B.C. In 2021, the embassy had six staff, including Soroosh, as well as the two consuls general, and two more vice-consuls in Toronto, according to GAC’s list. 

Soroosh said that former Afghan diplomats with the mission have remained in Canada where they have sought asylum. 

“The situation remains very much fragile and it’s very risky for former diplomats to go back to Afghanistan,” he said. “For that reason, former diplomats have stayed in Canada.” 

He said he has been having ongoing conversations with Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to create a pathway for former diplomats and their families to resettle in Canada.

“Other than diplomats, we still have a lot of Afghans at risk, including journalists, human rights advocates, and former officials of the government who need resettlement support. So that’s why we have been advocating for expanded opportunities when it comes to resettlement and protection measures,” he said. 

He noted that the IRCC resettlement program that was started after the Taliban takeover had ended in 2023. 

“We are very much hopeful that in the future there will be some new opportunities when it comes to resettlement,” he said. 

Soroosh said that in the absence of a legitimate government in Afghanistan, a Coordination Council of the Diplomatic and Consular Missions has been formed by envoys who do not engage with the Taliban. 

The council meets in person annually, and virtually every month. Later in September, they will meet in Belgium. 

“We have been able to use this mechanism to prioritize our collective efforts during the year, and we have been able to issue a lot of statements on different topics and issues related to Afghanistan,” he said. 

The council is chaired by Zalmai Rassoul—a former Afghan foreign minister and subsequent ambassador to the United Kingdom—as well as a rotating chair filled by a head of mission. 

Rassoul remained Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.K. after the Taliban takeover, but the Afghan embassy in London was closed in 2024. At the time, Rassoul said that was done at the U.K.'s request. The Taliban had announced in 2024 that it no longer recognized embassies of the former government.  

Taliban fails promise to moderate approach: envoy 

When the Taliban recaptured Kabul in 2021, its leaders trumpeted a more moderate approach, but in the last five years there have been few examples of that. 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has warned of gender apartheid in Afghanistan with 2.4 million girls not able to access secondary education. It warns that the number could rise to four million by 2030 if Taliban policy remains unchanged.

“The assumption that the Taliban would eventually moderate their approach has been proven wrong,” Soroosh said, remarking that the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating on “almost all fronts” as the Taliban has maintained an “absolutist” approach to government. 

After a 20-year-long war in Afghanistan, the Taliban retook Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, when western forces left the Central Asian country. Canadian troops were deployed to Afghanistan during the war until 2014, and 159 died during the mission.

“Five years after the Taliban takeover, the situation in Afghanistan remains very tragic. People of Afghanistan continue to face interconnected humanitarian, human rights, political, and security crises, and with women and girls basically suffering the most under the current situation,” Soroosh said.  

He said that Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) championing a “principled and pragmatic” foreign policy is a “very useful framework” to approach Afghanistan. 

“We can be pragmatic about some aspects of the current situation in Afghanistan. It means that we can recognize some of the realities on the ground. We can accept some realities on the ground without sacrificing fundamental principles and values,” he said. 

Soroosh said that Afghan civic stakeholders want to see a political dialogue to address the situation. But he said that armed resistance “should be seen as the consequence of the absence of a viable political process.” 

“So when the political space is closed, when there is no credible political avenue to addressing the grievances and aspirations of the people, it’s quite understandable that armed resistance may grow,” he said. “For that reason, we have been advocating for a political process.”

nmoss@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times