The United Nations Security Council has approved a travel-ban exemption for Abdul Salam Hanafi, deputy prime minister for administrative affairs of the Taliban, allowing him to travel to Doha for medical treatment in mid-August.
The exemption, announced by the council’s sanctions committee under Resolution 1988, permits Hanafi to travel between August 14 and August 31. The timing coincides with the period marking four years since the Taliban entered Kabul and regained power in 2021.
The council has previously authorized similar medical travel for Taliban officials, including Hanafi’s visit to China in June for the China–South Asia Expo and Culture Minister Khairullah Khairkhwa’s trip to Russia in July.
Taliban forces took control of Kabul in August 2021 after then-president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, an event that ended two decades of Western-backed governance and followed the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in Doha in February 2020.
Some observers have questioned the proximity of Hanafi’s travel approval to the politically sensitive date, though the United Nations says such exemptions are granted on humanitarian grounds.
