Afghanistan (MNN) – Taliban delegates from Afghanistan met with EU officials for the first time last week in Brussels. The closed-door meeting reportedly covered diplomatic relations and the return of deported Afghans to their home country.
The talks raise an important question: what do they signal about the potential legitimization of Taliban authorities?
Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations says, “I think every country, with maybe the exception of Russia, is tiptoeing around the Taliban. Russia is really the only one that I’m aware of that has legitimized the Taliban in any kind of a formal way. Everybody else is sort of acknowledging them. They might have interest. Some are reopening embassies and things of that nature.
Taliban fighters patrol Kabul, August 2021.
(Wikimedia Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taliban_Humvee_in_Kabul,_August_2021_(cropped).png)
“But nobody is in favor of how the Taliban operates. I mean, you’re talking about incredible amounts of human rights violations.”
It’s a disturbing reality for Afghan Christians going back.
“Almost all Christians inside of Afghanistan are what we call MBB – Muslim background believers,” says Kelley. “So they’ve converted from Islam, which, from their perspective and their version of Islam, is total apostasy, which is a capital crime. So I mean, living inside of Afghanistan as a follower of Jesus is maybe the most difficult place in the world to do so.”
Despite the danger, Kelley says ministries are finding ways to equip believers for outreach.
“There’s tremendous opportunities to train Afghans who are in these other countries who are ultimately going to be going back. I mean, Pakistan has pushed [out] hundreds of thousands of Afghans, deported them back. At Unknown Nations, we saw that as a green light opportunity and began doubling down on our strategies of training Afghans.
“We’ve trained over 800 Afghans – Christian leaders who are now missionaries inside of Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan (Photo courtesy of Rahmat Alizada/Unsplash.)
Pray for the Gospel’s spread in Afghanistan. Kelley asks for prayer in the words of Jesus from Matthew 9:38, “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.”
Kelley says, “How crazy is this, that the Lord of the harvest would equip Afghans…to go back into Afghanistan? That’s what we’re doing at Unknown Nations – coming alongside these precious men and women, giving them as many solar-powered audio Bibles as we can in their language [so that] there will be revival in Afghanistan.
“There is such a hunger among the Afghan diaspora that is scattered all over the place, and they want to go back into their country and share the good news of Jesus Christ.”
Header photo: EU flags waving in front of the European Commission building in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo, caption courtesy of Marco/Pexels)
