UK to mull blacklisting Afghanistan

The UK government is examining plans to make it a criminal offense to enter Afghanistan, as fears grow that Britons could travel to join Islamist terror networks in the country, Report informs referring to The Telegraph.

All or part of the Central Asian nation would be blacklisted under the proposal, which would allow UK authorities to jail people for up to 10 years if they were proven to have visited the outlawed territory.

The ministers and officials are focusing on the evacuation effort to get UK nationals and eligible Afghans out of the country at speed.

Proposals to blacklist Afghanistan are set to be discussed more widely in Whitehall later this week, however, as attention turns to the longer-term threats presented by the Taliban takeover.

These include the potential for radicalized western recruits to try and join the Taliban or other Islamist groups that emerge amid concerns that Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State Khorasan – also known as IS-KP or Isis-K – could gain momentum in the fragile country.