LETTER FROM VIENNA
On Tuesday, October 17, Andreas Mölzer, comfortably installed in a Viennese café, scrolled through the photos of his Afghanistan trip on his cell phone. "We spent some time in a market that had fabulous carpets and jewelry. A sheep was slaughtered of course, and we were also able to visit a girls' school where the teachers were very pretty and didn't wear burqas, only veils. In fact, we saw a lot of women in Kabul's streets," said the 70-year-old figure from the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
"Of course, despite the pick-ups and Kalashnikovs, they live as if they're still in the 13th century. Nevertheless, the Taliban did try to ensure some level of security, and we didn't feel in any danger throughout our trip," said the former MEP, who is the editor of a right-wing magazine close to the FPÖ and is still a columnist for the powerful tabloid Kronen Zeitung. Reputed to be one of the party's main ideologues, whose program is to fight "against the Islamization of Europe," he and three fellow travelers, all reputed to be close to, or active within the party, visited the Taliban government at the end of September, a trip that astounded Austria.
In Kabul, the group was received as an official delegation. Photos published on X (formerly Twitter) by the Afghan media on September 24, show them alongside Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's foreign minister – a government still unrecognized by most of the international community. "They discussed facilitating consular services for Afghans residing in Vienna," the Afghan TV channel TOLOnews reported. At a time when Europe's far-right has been pressing to return Afghans to their own country, the statement was corrected: "The discussion was actually more about how we might resume deportations," Mölzer said.
In Vienna, after learning about the trip from the published photos, the FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl was openly furious at an "incredibly stupid" expedition by "retired politicians," none of whom actually had an active mandate. He has threatened them with exclusion, although no formal proceedings have yet been initiated. One party MP, who had considered taking part in the trip before withdrawing at the last minute after a security alert by the Austrian foreign ministry, was nevertheless stripped of his portfolio as foreign affairs spokesman.
While currently riding high in the polls with his increasingly aggressive anti-Islam messages, Kickl cannot afford to be associated with an expedition that was a reminder of the party's past initiatives. Founded by former Nazis, and in the name of a mutual antipathy towards the United States and Israel, it had formerly befriended many dictators in the Arab and Muslim world. A close friend of Bruno Gollnisch, a former French National Front MEP, Mölzer recalled the time when Jörg Haider, the FPÖ's emblematic leader until 2005, had frequently visited the former Iraqi dictator Sadam Hussein and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. While criticizing the Taliban's "Stone-Age Islam," he praised the way "in which the Afghans have repelled all invaders for 2,000 years".
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