There are no differences between the Taliban in 1999 and in 2021 and the former Afghani President and Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation are largely to blame for the situation today, Dr. Nooralhaq Nasimi, a former Afghani refugee who founded the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association charity in the UK, told N1.

Nasimi arrived in the UK as a refugee with his wife and children in 1999 and founded the organisation, which helps refugees with integration in the country, five years later.

is a former refugee that fled Afghanistan with his family, who campaigns for refugee rights in Europe and his former home country.[1][2] In 2001 he founded the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association, a charity dedicated to helping refugees in London to integrate.[3] He currently serves as the organisation's director and in 2011 he founded the European Campaign for Human Rights in Afghanistan, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness of the plight of Afghans worldwide.[4]

There are no differences between 1999 and 2021 as “the Taliban are the same and they have not changed their attitude,” he said.
“The reason we left Afghanistan in 1999 is because of the Taliban, who are a very extremist and terrorist group persecuting people for no reason, torturing people with inhuman treatment,” he said.
“Human rights and women’s rights violations were committed under the Taliban in 1999, which I can see – the same thing is happening now in 2021,” he argued.

He said that what is now going on in Afghanistan is “very devastating and horrible” and the people are worried because they do not know what might happen in the future.

Most of those who left Afghanistan are now worried about their family members back home, he added.

Nasimi blamed former President, Ashraf Ghani, as well as U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, for the situation.

“Ashraf Ghani was very corrupt. Because of Ashraf Ghani and Zalmay Khalilzad, we have such a disaster,” he said.

They “undermined the international efforts” invested in the Afghani people since 2001, he argued.

Afghanistan was always grateful for the support it got from the US and the UK to improve the human and women’s rights situation and rule of law in the country, he said.

But then, Ghani and Khalilzad secretly “did something that is unbelievable,” he said.

However, he also said that the “Joe Biden administration made a very serious mistake which wasn’t supposed to happen to a country like Afghanistan, where they started only 20 years ago having some kind of institutions in place and civil society.”

More about the background regarding the situation in Afghanistan and Nasimi’s personal experiences fleeing the country, as well as about the possible new migrant wave expected in light of the Taliban takeover and the perceived danger of a new wave of terrorism, can be heard in the full interview linked above.