Reports from Kabul say Taliban personnel entered the residence of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Wednesday and prevented a group of tribal elders and other visitors from meeting him, in an incident that has not yet been publicly explained by the authorities.
Afghanistan International, citing sources in Kabul, reported that armed personnel entered the residence and stopped people who had arrived to see Karzai. The outlet said some of those present protested and were dispersed. AtlasPress, in a separate report, also said Taliban personnel prevented tribal elders and other visitors from meeting the former president.
The accounts agree on the central point that visitors were blocked from seeing Karzai, but important details remain unclear. There has been no public explanation of why the personnel went to the residence, who ordered the action, or whether the restrictions were intended for a particular meeting or represented a broader change in the former president’s circumstances.
Neither report said Karzai had been detained. Afghanistan International said its sources did not describe an attempt to arrest him. No casualty was reported in connection with the incident.
The Taliban authorities and Karzai’s office had not issued a public statement explaining the episode when the reports emerged. In the absence of an official account, claims about the motive behind the action remain unconfirmed. One source cited by Afghanistan International linked the incident to Karzai’s recent public statements, but that assertion has not been independently established.
Karzai, who served as Afghanistan’s president from 2004 to 2014 and led the country during much of the international military presence, remained in Kabul after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Unlike many senior officials from the former republic, he did not leave Afghanistan and has continued to make occasional public statements on national issues.
Karzai first emerged as the head of Afghanistan’s post-2001 interim administration before winning the 2004 presidential election. He won a second term in 2009 and left office in 2014, when Ashraf Ghani became president. Since leaving the presidency, Karzai has remained involved in public debate without holding an executive government position. His continued residence in Kabul after the collapse of the former republic has made his meetings and public interventions a closely watched part of Afghanistan’s political landscape.
He has repeatedly called for national dialogue and has spoken publicly about education, including the continued exclusion of Afghan girls from secondary schools and women from universities. His public activity, however, has been more limited than during the former republic, and reports over recent years have described restrictions affecting some of his travel and meetings.
The reported incident comes during a politically sensitive period for Afghanistan. The Taliban government remains internationally unrecognised by most countries, while foreign governments and international organisations continue to press Kabul over women’s rights, political inclusion and security concerns. Taliban officials say Afghanistan is stable under the current system and reject outside pressure over the country’s internal political arrangements.
Karzai remains one of the most recognisable political figures still living inside Afghanistan. His presence in Kabul has periodically drawn attention because he has maintained contacts with Afghan political and community figures while also avoiding a formal role in the Taliban administration. Any significant change in the conditions surrounding his meetings or movements would therefore carry wider political significance.
For now, the available reporting establishes only that visitors were prevented from meeting him and that people at the residence were dispersed, according to the cited Kabul sources. The reason for the action, the authority behind it and whether any new restrictions have formally been imposed on Karzai remain unresolved. The situation remains fluid.