Afghan diplomat Zakia Wardak resigns after being implicated of smuggling nearly $2 million worth of gold into India – CBS News

May 6, 2024/ 12:08 PM EDT/ AFP The lasting toll of war The enduring toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 05:02 New Delhi — Afghanistan’s leading diplomat in India resigned days after she was apparently captured by airport authorities smuggling almost $2 million worth of gold into the nation. Zakia Wardak, the Afghan Consul-General in India’s monetary capital Mumbai, published a declaration on social networks revealing her resignation. Afghanistan’s embassy in New Delhi closed down in November, more than 2 years after the Taliban went back to power in Kabul following the collapse of the Western-backed federal government, leaving Wardak as the nation’s most senior agent in India. “It is with fantastic remorse that I reveal my choice to step far from my function at the Consulate and Embassy in India, efficient May 5, 2024,” Wardak stated Saturday. A file image published to her X account in 2018 programs Afghan diplomat Zakia Wardak, who resigned on May 5, 2024 from her function as Afghanistan’s leading diplomat in India after reports declared she had actually been captured smuggling nearly $2 million worth of gold into the nation. Zakia Wardak/X Indian media reports stated Wardak was stopped last month by monetary intelligence authorities at Mumbai airport on arrival from Dubai, together with her boy, bring about 55 pounds of gold. She was not apprehended since of her diplomatic resistance, the reports stated, however the gold– worth around $1.9 million– was taken. Wardak’s resignation leaves countless Afghan nationals, consisting of trainees and entrepreneurs, with no consular representation in India. Many foreign countries, consisting of India, do not formally acknowledge Afghanistan’s Taliban federal government, however acknowledge it as the de facto judgment authority. In numerous Afghan objectives, diplomats designated by the previous federal government have actually declined to deliver control of embassy structures and residential or commercial property to agents of the Taliban authorities. Wardak stated in the declaration that she had actually “experienced many individual attacks and libel” over the previous year. Such occurrences “have actually shown the obstacles dealt with by females in Afghan society,” she included, making no specific referral to the gold accusations. The Taliban has actually asserted complete control over around a lots Afghan embassies abroad– consisting of in Pakistan, China, Turkey and Iran. Others run on a hybrid system, with the ambassador gone however embassy personnel still performing regular consular work such as releasing visas and other files. The majority of nations left their objectives from Kabul as the Taliban surrounded the Afghan capital in August 2021, although a handful of embassies– consisting of Pakistan, China and Russia– never ever shut and still have ambassadors in Kabul. In: India Taliban Afghanistan Gold Mining Dubai

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