From John Nelson
KABUL: Pakistani Chargé d’Affaires (CdA) to Afghanistan Ubaidur Rehman Nizamani has returned to Kabul more than four months after he survived an attempt on his life.
“Yes, I have resumed my responsibilities,” Nizamani has confirmed to media on Monday while there was no official statement neither by Pakistan’s Foreign Office nor Pakistani Embassy in Kabul.
In December last year, Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul came under attack, leaving one security guard critically injured. The FO had confirmed that Nizama-ni, who remained unhurt in the attack, was the target. The banned Islamic State group’s Khorasan chapter (IS-K) had claimed responsibility.
At the time, Nizamani was in Kabul for less than a month since he took over the charge as head of mission, replacing former ambassador Mansoor Ah-med Khan on November 4, 2022.
Ten days after the attack, five Chinese nationals were wounded in a bombing-and-shooting attack on a Kabul hotel, prompting China to ask its nationals to leave the country.
In January, Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said that a network of Daesh militants involved in the attack on the embassy and the hotel where Chinese nationals were staying had been killed in an operation.
In February, official sources had dismissed rumours of an evacuation of diplomats while insisting that Islamabad was still awaiting security assurances from the Afghan government before sending him back.
Meanwhile, Nizamani was part of the Pakistani delegation that went to Kabul during the same month for talks with the interim Afghan government on security-related matters where the two sides discussed the growing threat of terrorism in the region, particularly from the banned militant groups Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and IS-K.
