In 2021, when the government of then President Ashraf Ghani fell in Afghanistan and the Taliban took over power, Taliban officials asked Maniza Bakhtari to step down from her post.
But Afghanistan's Ambassador to Austria Maniza Bakhtari refused to accept this demand of Taliban. For this reason he is also called the 'last ambassador'.
In an interview with BBC News, Maniza Bakhtari told that in the year 2021, when the democratic government of Afghanistan fell and the Taliban came to power, she remained very upset for about 24 hours. During this time she kept thinking about what she should do now.
She says, "The group which we called extremists till a day ago, was now running the country."
According to Maniza Bakhtari, she felt that because she was a woman, the Taliban government would want to remove her from the post of Afghanistan's ambassador to Austria. There was also a question in her mind that if she accepted the Taliban's demand and left the post, then what would happen to the embassy and the sensitive documents kept there? Ultimately he decided to remain in office.
She says, "I was sent abroad by an elected government to represent my country and the people of Afghanistan. Then why should I step down?"
Although Taliban officials removed her from her post a few years ago, Maniza Bakhtari still considers herself Afghanistan's ambassador in protest. She is running the Embassy of Afghanistan in Austria according to her own principles and conditions.
Maniza Bakhtari was born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. She says that the apartment where her family lived was in an area where mostly middle-class families lived. His father was a well-known poet, writer and thinker of Afghanistan.
When asked how the rise of the Mujahideen affected Afghanistan and his family's life, he said his father was jailed during that period for his views.
Maniza Bakhtari says that when Taliban forces entered Kabul in the 1990s, her father immediately felt in danger. He decided that he should leave the country as soon as possible.
In 1996, when the Taliban captured power in Afghanistan for the first time, her husband also took a big decision to leave the country. Maniza Bakhtari says, "If my father had not left the country, he would have met the same fate as Najibullah."
He said that considering the situation, he too, like thousands of others, decided to leave Afghanistan and go to Pakistan.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent US and British invasion of Afghanistan led to the fall of the Taliban. After this, like many other refugees from Afghanistan living in Pakistan, Maniza Bakhtari also decided to return to her country.
She says that she was teaching at that time when she was contacted by the Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan. She says, "At that time, I was a lecturer at Kabul University and was also working with a non-governmental organization (NGO). Then I got a call from the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan."
In 2021, when the Taliban once again captured Kabul, Maniza Bakhtari was Afghanistan's ambassador to Austria. She says this was a time when she had to take a morally clear stand and take a difficult decision.
According to Maniza, after this Taliban officials contacted him. He said he wanted to hold a meeting on Zoom with all the diplomats. But Maniza refused to attend this meeting. She says that in 2022, she received a letter from the Taliban government, in which she was informed about her removal from the post.
