The Taliban and Burkina Faso ambassadors pledge new trade and mining cooperation

DAKAR, Senegal — The Taliban's acting ambassador to Iran has met with his Burkina Faso counterpart in the Iranian capital Tehran as part of a broader outreach effort by the West African country to win new trade partners, according to Taliban-controlled media.

During the meeting between acting Ambassador Maulvi Fazl Mohammad Haqqani and Ambassador Mohammad Kabura, both parties pledged to cooperate on trade, mining and vocational training. The Taliban are the de facto rulers of Afghanistan.

''In this meeting, the parties emphasized the expansion of cooperation in the fields of trade, agriculture, mining, and the exchange of professional and vocational skills,'' the Afghan embassy in Tehran said in a statement.

Both ambassadors also pledged Monday to have private sector delegations visit soon as part of the plan to develop trade between Afghanistan and Burkina Faso.

The meeting comes less than a week after the Commander General of Iranian law enforcement and security forces visited neighboring Niger and announced new areas of cooperation and training for the Niger Police and National Guard, including training at the Iranian Police University.

''The meeting culminated in the signing of a memorandum of understanding covering several areas of cooperation between the two countries,'' according to a statement from Niger's Minister of the Interior, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Toumba to media outlets.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of withdrawing from the country after two decades of war.

Burkina Faso has struggled in recent years with a ballooning militant insurgency, elements of which are aligned with the Taliban informally. The landlocked nation of 23 million people has come to symbolize the security crisis in the arid Sahel region south of the Sahara in recent years. It has been shaken by violence from extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, and the governments fighting them.

The three-nation bloc of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced last year that they were leaving the regional bloc known as ECOWAS. They then created their own security partnership, known as the Alliance of Sahel States, severed military ties with long-standing Western partners such as U.S. and France, and turned to Russia for military support.

Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Bamako, told The Associated Press that Burkina Faso and the Alliance of Sahel States, known by its French acronym AES, have been searching for alternative partners since their respective military juntas took power.

They wish to "rely less on western companies and focus more on their so called new partners,'' Laessing said.

''Iran has been trying to boost cooperation with the Sahel AES countries. They also have been active in Burkina Faso sending even some aid. A shipment arrived at Ouagadougou airport.''