Afghanistan’s only female diplomat resigns in India after gold smuggling allegations

By RAHIM FAIEZ
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An Afghan diplomat in India who was appointed before the Taliban seized power in 2021 and says she was the only woman in the country’s diplomatic service has resigned. Zakia Wardak, the Afghan consul-general for Mumbai, announced her resignation on her official account on the social media platform X on Saturday after Indian media reported last week that she was briefly detained at the city’s airport on allegations of smuggling 25 bricks of gold. In a statement Wardak made no mention of her reported detention or gold smuggling allegations but said that as the only woman in Afghanistan’s diplomatic apparatus, she had faced “waves of organized attacks aimed at destroying me.”