Le Figaro Editorialist Calls for Reopening French Embassy in Kabul

PARIS, Sept. 7, 2021 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, Renaud Girard, a senior editorialist for the French daily Le Figaro, called on President Emmanuel Macron to reopen the French Embassy in Afghanistan.  “It is not by being absent from Kabul that we will best brandish the banner of human rights before the eyes of the Afghan population. Diplomacy is more about talking to your opponents than to your friends. As the founder and first president of our Fifth Republic, General de Gaulle offered an excellent principle to his diplomacy: France recognizes states, not regimes. For the past two decades, we have tended to forget this sound principle. Is it because we are sometimes too much aligned with American foreign policy? Is it because we have not understood that being a good and solid ally does not mean becoming an aligned vassal?

“In Kabul, the Taliban have called on foreign embassies to reopen. Unquestionably, the Taliban are Afghans, and unquestionably, they control all the territory of their country. This is regrettable, but they are here to stay. Just as the Communists are there for a long time in Beijing. We do not like the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, nor its return to the cult of personality. However, we maintain a very large embassy in Beijing. Because China is a huge country, with which France must have deep political, commercial and cultural relations.

“We do not like the ideology of the Taliban and their taste for Sharia law, which is the opposite of all French values. These values have been shaped by our Greco-Latin and Judeo-Christian heritage, itself the matrix of the Enlightenment. But we must take the realities as they are. De Gaulle also taught us that there is no real politics outside of reality. One is that the Americans, after having waged war on the Taliban for 20 years, have abruptly decided to hand over Afghanistan to them. On Monday, Sept. 6, 2021, Secretary of State Blinken made the trip from Doha, in part to establish, via the Qataris, an ongoing link with the Taliban.”