Akmal Dawi
VOA News
September 26, 2023
WASHINGTON — Members of the United Nations Security Council, except Russia and China, on Tuesday issued a resounding condemnation of the Taliban’s relentless persecution of women in Afghanistan, calling on all member states to take urgent action to hold the country’s leadership accountable.
The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, said since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have issued over 50 decrees with the explicit aim of erasing women from public life.
The decrees have included the closure of secondary education for women, including universities, the prohibition of women’s entry into entertainment and sports facilities, the total exclusion of women from government, and the denial of most jobs for women.
Sima Bahous, executive director of U.N. Women, told the same meeting that the Islamist government has imposed extreme patriarchal gender norms that flagrantly deny women their basic human rights.
Afghan women “tell us that they are prisoners living in darkness, confined to their homes without hope for the future,” said Bahous.
Karima Bennoune, an international human rights expert, urged the United Nations to officially recognize and codify the gender apartheid system that has taken hold in Afghanistan.
“A powerful aspect of the gender apartheid approach is that [it] not only implicates the perpetrators of apartheid, but it means, as was the case with racial apartheid in South Africa, that no member state can be complicit in or normalize the Taliban’s illegal actions and that they must take effective action to end this situation,” Bennoune told the Security Council meeting.
Codifying gender apartheid in international laws, Bennoune said, would make it clear that there can be no recognition of the Taliban government by any member state, and that the country should not be granted a seat at the U.N.
Hundreds of Afghan women who participated in a U.N. survey in July voiced a similar sentiment, saying that any recognition of the Taliban government should be contingent on concrete improvements in women’s rights, including access to education and the ability to work.
Despite the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women working for U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations, Special Representative Otunbayeva emphasized the importance of continuing diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.
“Dialogue is not recognition,” she said. “Engagement is not acceptance of these policies. On the contrary: dialogue and engagement are how we are attempting to change these policies.”
No Condemnation by Russia, China
Calling the Taliban’s policies abhorrent and unacceptable, nearly all council members, except for Russia and China, demanded that Taliban leaders end their misogynistic policies.
In her remarks to council members, Anna Evstigneeva, deputy Russian representative to the U.N., said that “we closely listened” to the statements made by the head of U.N. Women and Bennoune, but she did not condemn the Taliban policies.
Instead, she used the platform to criticize the United States and NATO for their two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and their subsequent abandonment of the country, leaving it mired in humanitarian crises.
“We are keen to develop relations with Kabul,” said Evstigneeva, adding that a Taliban delegation, along with representatives from Indonesia, Turkey and several regional countries, have been invited to a meeting about Afghanistan in Kazan, Russia, on Friday.
A Chinese representative went as far as to urge Taliban authorities to respect the rights of Afghan women and form an inclusive government.
China recently appointed a new ambassador to Kabul.
Chinese companies have also signed mining contracts with the Taliban government.
Daily Beast: The Taliban has reportedly obtained a years-old security plan created by the U.S. that could help launch a sweeping new surveillance system in Afghanistan, raising concerns among experts that the system could be used for nefarious purposes. The United States has claimed it is not working with the Taliban on the surveillance program, which will take at least four years to roll out, according to Qani. It’s not clear how the Taliban obtained the alleged surveillance maps from either the United States or Turkey. The alleged national security plan has already raised concerns among human rights activist who fear that the Taliban could use the system to go after domestic critics, rather than target terrorists. 
Bloomberg: Unemployment is rampant, two-thirds of households struggle to afford basic items and inflation has turned into deflation, according to a World Bank report. Planeloads of US dollars arrived almost weekly from the United Nations to support the poor, some of up to $40 million, for at least 18 months since the end of 2021. 
Khaama: Pakistan’s Caretaker Prime Minister, Anwar ul Haq Kakar, asserted that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is within Afghanistan’s borders and maintains training camps. In a recent interview with TRT, Pakistan’s Caretaker Prime Minister stated, “We do raise such issues with them (Taliban administration); there are training camps over there, on their soil (Afghanistan), which is a point of concern for us.” He added, however, that Islamabad is still determining if this is all intentional and questioned whether the TTP enjoys the patronage of the Afghan government. He said this situation remains to be seen, and Islamabad wants to maintain its relationship with Afghanistan regarding security operations. 
8am: In recent months, Iran has intensified its deportation of Afghan refugees. In August alone, 46,838 Afghan refugees were either deported from Iran or voluntarily returned via the Rah-e Abresham border crossing in Nimruz province. 
Ariana: The Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan says that the Ministry in cooperation with the relevant United Nations agencies started a nationwide polio vaccination campaign on Monday. According to the ministry, the aim of the campaign is to vaccinate more than 11 million children under the age of five against the wild polio virus. 
AP: Two years after U.S. troops left, Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd returned to Afghanistan with an idea: to use an old-style Afghan “box camera” to document how life has changed under Taliban rule.