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The United States has reportedly denied to issue a visa to the First Vice President General Abdul Rashid Dostum to visit New York and Washington to discuss the situation of the country with the American officials, it has been reported.
The step was reportedly taken for Gen. Dostum’s alleged involvement in the mass killing of the Taliban insurgents in late 2001 as he was fighting alongside Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces to oust the Taliban.
The message to deny entry to Gen. Dostum to United States was passed to the Afghan government days before his departure, the New York Times quoting multiple Afghan and American officials reported.
The report further added that the Afghan government quickly and quietly canceled Gen. Dostum’s visit in a bid to avoid a humiliating public spectacle.
However, Gen. Dostum has said that the trip was cancelled due to tenuous security situation in the country.
“I personally intend to visit as soon as the situation here allows,” Gen. Dostum said in the interview with the Voice of America radio.
He assured listeners that he had many friends in Washington — “I am well acquainted with our Pentagon friends and congressmen,” he said — and that he would tell them how things were in Afghanistan.
“I want to discuss the situation with them,” he said. “They have to take this issue seriously. Otherwise, it might get out of control.”
According to the Times, that discussion seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. Gen. Dostum’s inability to secure entry to the United States is in fact a longstanding issue.
In 2013, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has known Mr. Dostum for decades, personally asked Secretary of State John Kerry to grant him a visa. At the time, Mr. Rohrabacher said he was seeking to bring Mr. Dostum to Washington to discuss the war and the future of the Afghan government.
No visa was issued then, and Gen. Dostum’s election as vice president the following year has not changed the Obama administration’s view of him or its willingness to let him visit the United States, said two senior American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Afghan government. American officials do not want to be seen with him, one said. K-P
THE PASHTUN TIMES
