Afghanistan issues official response to controversial statements about Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan's embassy in Kabul has stated that the critical remarks allegedly made against Uzbekistan on behalf of an Afghan official are untrue. This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan.

Earlier, reports circulated on social media and in some media outlets claiming that Khalid Hanafi, the Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice of the Afghan interim government, had expressed critical views about Uzbekistan in a speech.

Following these reports, the Uzbek side conducted an urgent investigation. As a result, on July 16, Afghanistan's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice issued an official denial, stating that the circulated claims do not correspond to reality.

The official statement emphasized that certain media outlets and other sources are misinterpreting facts with the aim of undermining the mutual trust and good-neighborly relations between the two brotherly nations.

The ministry's statement noted that Uzbekistan is one of the important centers of Islamic civilization and is highly valued as the homeland of great scholars such as Imam Bukhari. The religious, historical, and cultural closeness between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan was also specifically acknowledged.

According to officials, the negative opinions about Uzbekistan spread on social media and in some publications do not reflect the minister's actual position. Therefore, these claims were categorically rejected and assessed as a distortion of the truth.

At the end of the statement, confidence was expressed that the friendly, mutually respectful, and good-neighborly relations between the two countries would continue to be strengthened in the future.