VIENNA — Manizha Bakhtari still sits behind the desk at the Afghan embassy in Vienna, four years after the ruling Taliban seized power in Kabul and formally demanded her departure. Appointed under the previous government, she refuses to recognise the new regime, and Austria continues to accredit her as her country’s ambassador, according to “Dawn News”.
The Austrian foreign ministry confirmed: “Ms Bakhtari is still accredited as Afghanistan’s ambassador and permanent representative to international organisations in Austria.” The Taliban authorities, meanwhile, have tried repeatedly to install their own diplomat, but Vienna has declined accreditation.
From modest quarters in a city fringe, the embassy under Bakhtari still offers limited consular services, passport renewals, identity verifications despite the collapse of formal ties and the absence of funding from Kabul.
The stakes go beyond paperwork. Bakhtari, formerly a journalist, chief of staff in the Afghan foreign ministry and ambassador to the Nordic countries now describes her mission as defending the rights of Afghan women and girls shut out by the Taliban’s harsh policies. She launched a programme called “Daughters” to support clandestine schooling and online education for Afghan girls barred from classrooms.
Her defiance has drawn threats and vitriol: hateful messages flooding her social media, warning even of death. “They call me a ‘dirty, ugly woman’ who ‘cherishes Western values,’ but I don’t care,” she told AFP.
In the diplomatic twilight of a homeland she cannot go back to, Bakhtari remains the last accredited Afghan ambassador in the world appointed by the ousted Afghan republic. Her presence in Vienna; a ghost mission of sorts is testament to the unresolved legitimacy crisis in Kabul and the wider fragility of international recognition in an era of shifting regimes.
