Afghanistan International: At the end of the first day of the UN meeting in Doha, which included Taliban representatives, the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) reported an attack on the Taliban in Kabul. According to the AFF, this “guerrilla operation” targeted a Taliban checkpoint in Bagh-e Bala area, resulting in the deaths of three Taliban members and the injury of one. A video shared by the front on X social media platform, allegedly belonging to this incident, shows an explosion on a relatively dark and busy road. The exact location and details of the explosion remain unclear. Click here to read more (external link).
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Zabihullah Mujahid
Afghanistan International: Zabihullah Mujahid, head of the Taliban delegation, urged participants of the third Doha meeting to release Afghanistan’s Central Bank reserves and lift financial and banking sanctions on the group. Mujahid emphasised that for the Doha process to be “meaningful,” an alternative to poppy cultivation should be financially supported. He also called for the formation of a working group among participants of the Doha meeting to achieve these objectives. Click here to read more (external link).
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Afghan Talks Kick Off In Doha Amid Anger Over Taliban’s Exclusion Of Women
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
June 30, 2024
Two days of UN-organized talks on international relations with Taliban-led Afghanistan were getting under way in the Qatari capital, Doha, on June 30, with the Taliban present for the first time — but rights groups expressed anger over the hard-line fundamentalist regime’s exclusion of women and its refusal to discuss women’s rights at the forum.
“The Taliban had a major role in creating the agenda of this meeting and who should be in this meeting,” Shahrazad Akbar, the former head of the Independent Human Rights Commission and currently executive director of the Rawadari rights organization, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, speaking from Britain.
“This in itself is a big problem and is giving power and legitimacy to the Taliban,” she said.
Habiba Sarabi, a prominent women’s rights activist and former member of the negotiating team of the deposed Afghan government, echoed those remarks, saying, “Afghan women are half of Afghan society.”
“How can we say that women are not present in important decision-making meetings. When it is specifically related to Afghanistan, women should be present and women should also participate in those decisions,” she told Radio Azadi.
This is the third such UN-sponsored meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, but the first in which the Taliban has been involved. Along with UN officials, delegations from some two dozen nations, including the United States, are expected to attend.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said organizers refused to accept the Taliban’s conditions for attendance at the previous gathering in February, including demands that Afghan civil society members be excluded and that the group be considered as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.
Afghan women’s rights groups and supporters have held protests inside Afghanistan and in Europe over the Taliban’s participation and its exclusion of women at the gathering.
Zahid Mustafa, who has organized a protest in Amsterdam, told Radio Azadi that “our goal by these protests is that the United Nations has invited the Taliban to this meeting on behalf of Afghans. But we are protesting this and calling for a boycott of the Doha meeting.”
Shukriya Barakzai, a women’s rights activist and Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Norway — who was invited to the previous meeting — expressed frustration with the UN organizers of the summit.
“The United Nations’ looking down upon Afghan women and representatives of civil society shows that, despite the fact that this meeting was organized by the United Nations, they are acting against their own procedures and values,” she told Radio Azadi from London.
She did not say if she was invited to the current gathering in Doha.
Roza Otunbaeva, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), has defended the failure to include Afghan women at the meeting, saying that women’s rights are certain to be raised with the Taliban. She said the group’s inclusion in the talks does not represent a legitimization of its government.
The Taliban government, which took over after the U.S.-led international coalition left the country in mid-2020, is not recognized internationally, although Beijing has accepted credentials from a Taliban ambassador.
The United Nations has accused the Taliban of waging “gender apartheid” on women and girls since returning to power nearly three years ago, closing girls’ schools and forcing women out of the workplace and out of public spaces.
Women’s rights groups and civil society activists are expected to meet with international diplomats and UN officials on July 2, after the close of the official two-day talks.
With reporting by AP
Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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Taliban stand firm against negotiating women’s rights at Doha
Zabihullah Mujahid
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
June 29, 2024
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban on Saturday ruled out any discussions on “internal issues” of Afghanistan, including women’s rights, with international envoys at a crucial United Nations-hosted meeting in Doha, Qatar.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesperson and head of its delegation attending the conference in the capital of the Gulf state, said before his visit to Doha that the two-day talks commencing Sunday would primarily center on Afghan economic issues and counternarcotics efforts.
“We acknowledge women are facing issues, but they are internal Afghan matters and need to be addressed locally within the framework of Islamic Sharia,” Mujahid told a news conference in the capital, Kabul, when asked whether Afghan women’s rights would be on the meeting agenda.
“Our meetings, such as the one in Doha or with other countries, have nothing to do with the lives of our sisters, nor will we allow them to interfere in our internal affairs,” he noted.
Special envoys from around two dozen countries, including the United States, will gather in Doha Sunday to interact with Taliban representatives for the first time since U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres initiated what is referred to as the “Doha process” a year ago.
The dialogue is aimed at developing a unified and coherent international approach to increase engagement with the fundamentalist Afghan authorities.
The Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 as the U.S.-led foreign forces departed the country after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war. They have imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, banning girls from schools beyond the sixth grade and many Afghan women from public and private workplaces, including the U.N., among other restrictions on their freedom.
The international community has refused to formally recognize the male-only Taliban government until it removes the restrictions on women and girls.
The Taliban defend their governance, saying it is aligned with Afghan culture and Islamic law. They were not invited to the first Doha meeting in May 2023, and they refused an invitation to the second in February. Both events were hosted by Guterres himself.
The U.N. is under fire for excluding women Afghan representatives from Sunday’s talks. The decision has triggered outrage among global human rights groups and female rights advocates, who argue that the Taliban’s curbs on women and girls should be a central focus of any discussions about the future of Afghanistan.
Mujahid defended the decision to skip previous Doha talks, saying Taliban representatives were invited only for limited interactions and they were refused a meeting with the U.N. secretary-general.
He said that other groups promoting “violence and disharmony” in Afghanistan also were invited to those sessions as representatives of the country despite Taliban objections. “Now the [Taliban] conditions have been accepted that this time it will not happen,” Mujahid claimed.
The U.N. spokesperson announced on Friday that Rosemary DiCarlo, its undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, will host the Doha meeting of special international envoys on behalf of Guterres and raise women’s issues.
In addition, Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York that DiCarlo and special international envoys will meet on Tuesday with representatives of Afghan civil society, including human rights and women’s organizations and advocates — a day after the two-day session with the Taliban ends.
“The undersecretary-general will raise the rights of women and girls, human rights in general, and political inclusion in the discussions in Doha that she will be having with the de facto [Taliban] authorities,” Dujarric said.
“The ultimate objective of the process is an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors, fully integrated into the international community and meeting its international obligations, including on human rights, and particularly on the rights of women and girls,” Dujarric said.
Mujahid insisted that the Taliban’s participation in Sunday’s Doha meeting would mutually benefit Afghanistan and the world and help restore the country’s dialogue with the West.
The U.S. and Western countries at large have isolated the Taliban over their harsh treatment of Afghan women and other human rights concerns. They moved their diplomatic missions to Doha after the Taliban takeover, terminated economic development aid for the country, and isolated the Afghan banking sector over terrorism-related sanctions on many leaders of the de facto government in Kabul.
However, most of Afghanistan’s neighbors, including China, Iran and Pakistan, and many regional countries such as Russia and Turkey have retained their embassies and increased diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.
The Taliban maintain they have restored peace in war-torn Afghanistan, and their crackdown on narcotics, including a nationwide ban on poppy cultivation, has almost ended illicit drug production in the country.
The U.N. has endorsed those claims, stating that the prohibition has resulted in a 95% decrease in drug production in a country that was previously the world’s largest producer.
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Taliban Leader’s Relation With Group’s Foreign Minister Strained, Say Sources
Muttaqi
Afghanistan International: Reliable sources have told Afghanistan International that relations between Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban, and Amir Khan Muttaqi, the group’s foreign minister, have soured. Recently, the Taliban selected Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesperson for their government, to attend the third Doha meeting instead of Muttaqi. According to these sources, Mujahid’s power is increasing over time, and his office has been relocated to Kandahar. Click here to read more (external link).