No Afghan women allowed to attend UN-led meetings with Taliban: ‘Caving to terrorist demands’

Afghan women had been blocked from attending the high-level meetings between the Taliban and United Nations leaders and particular envoys dealing with Afghanistan in Qatar on Sunday. The Taliban had earlier demanded the exclusion of its nation’s women as a situation for its attendance. 

“The diplomatic community’s constant caving to terrorist demands only reinforces the Taliban view. Women and girls in Afghanistan are living in an open-air prison and are treated as less than human. Abduction, rape, torture, and murder are daily realities for women under the Taliban’s gender apartheid system,” Jason Howk, director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, informed Fox News Digital.

The discussions on the meetings reportedly centered on personal sector development, financing and banking restrictions, and drug trafficking, according to The Associated Press. Taliban chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid will lead the delegation of Afghanistan’s de facto authorities. Following Sunday’s meetings with the Taliban, the particular envoys had been anticipated to meet with Afghani women and members of civil society.

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“The U.N. and any diplomats or nations that support excluding women from the Doha talks to accommodate the wishes of the Taliban and Haqqani terrorist network should be publicly shamed. The women from Afghanistan, who believe in human rights for all, must be in every meeting about the future of the country. The misogynistic terrorists should be kept out of any conference until they reverse their positions on human rights and terrorism,” Howk complained. 

U.N. spokesman Jose Luis Diaz assured Fox News Digital that “we – and I expect many of the special envoys – will raise human rights, and particularly the rights of women and girls, in all the discussions with the Taliban.” Diaz didn’t reply to questions on whether or not delegates will particularly tackle an exhaustive record of repressive Taliban orders like pressured veiling, a ban on training for ladies after the sixth grade, and limits positioned on women’s capability to journey with no male chaperon.

U.S. individuals had been to embrace Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West and Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights, Rina Amiri, in accordance to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who informed reporters that West and Amiri “only committed to participate once they secured clarity regarding the substantive agenda and, more importantly, confirmed that there would be meaningful engagement at the conference with Afghan women and members of Afghan civil society.”

A Taliban spokesman addressed a press convention in Kabul on June 29, 2024. Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities met with worldwide envoys on June 30 in Qatar for talks offered by the United Nations as a key step in an engagement course of, however condemned by rights teams for sidelining Afghan women. (Photo by AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP through Getty Images)

The Taliban steadfastly professed that they’d not focus on women in Doha. During a Saturday press convention in Kabul, the Voice of America reported that Mujahid reiterated that “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.” While Mujahid mentioned that he acknowledges that “women are facing issues,” he famous that “they are internal Afghan matters and need to be addressed locally within the framework of Islamic Sharia.”   

In an interview posted to X, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Roza Otunbayeva gave a sign about how women’s points is likely to be raised. “The issue of private industry and banking and…counternarcotics policy, they are both about the women,” Otunbayeva informed reporters. 

UNAMA didn’t reply to questions for Otunbayeva about her remarks, and the scope of discussions with the Taliban about women’s rights.

Afghan women chant and maintain indicators of protest throughout an indication in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 26, 2022. (AP)

Since Taliban supreme chief Haibatullah Akhundzada instituted sharia regulation countrywide in November 2022, Afghan women have been topic to bodily assaults in public for supposed lawbreaking. On June 4, 14 women in Sar-e Pul province had been publicly flogged for crimes together with immoral relations, theft and sodomy. 

Some of the worst assaults on women have taken place in personal. In its 2023 Human Rights Report, the State Department wrote of allegations that women had been being raped in Taliban prisons. Some had been reportedly pressured to bear abortions after changing into pregnant whereas in custody. Others had been mentioned to have been executed after they “fell seriously ill as a consequence of repeated sexual assaults by Taliban members.” 

The head of the Taliban’s Doha political workplace, Suhail Shaheen, informed Fox News Digital that Western media experiences about women’s points “don’t reflect the ground realities in Afghanistan,” explaining that “girls have access to education in medical institutions and other Darul Uloom institutes throughout the country.” Shaheen didn’t reply to follow-up questions on what number of ladies obtain such training or how ladies are anticipated to qualify for greater training sooner or later if their education ceases after sixth grade. 

Shaheen additionally acknowledged that experiences of rape in prisons are “a mere claim and accusation. Those behind such accusations want to pave the way for [Afghan women’s] asylum in the West. I hope those at the helm of affairs in the West are no more misled by some biased media outlets.” 

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A member of Taliban forces fires within the air to disperse Afghan women throughout a rally to protest in opposition to what the protesters say is Taliban restrictions on women in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 28, 2021. (Reuters/Ali Khara)

Journalist Lynne O’Donnell, a former Kabul bureau chief for the AP and Agence France-Presse, wrote for the Spectator about investigations into Taliban members raping imprisoned Afghan women. She informed Fox News Digital that she “wrote about a story that contained credible allegations that are being investigated by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, and have been mentioned by the State Department…so just to say that I’ve made it up, and it’s a reflection of Western propaganda, it’s just further Taliban spin. It’s meaningless.”

In 2022, O’Donnell was detained and investigated by the Taliban whereas touring in Afghanistan to report on modifications within the nation because the Taliban’s takeover. The Taliban pressured O’Donnell to publicly retract her prior reporting about Taliban crimes, together with allegations the Taliban had pressured women into marriages, earlier than she was permitted to go away the nation. 

O’Donnell additionally claimed that “The U.N., the U.S., the EU, the U.K., the international community writ large is colluding with the Taliban, as they have all along. Their pushback against my reporting is proof that they would prefer to collude with a group of terrorists who are killers, drug dealers, widow makers, child murderers, liars, and misogynists.”

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow on the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, informed Fox News Digital that U.N. personnel in Doha mustn’t underestimate their negotiating companions. “Taliban management outclassed the U.S. in negotiations, organized the ouster of the U.S. from Afghanistan, and seized control of the country even earlier than the U.S. might go away.” Roggio counts these as indicators that the group is “organized, unified, and sophisticated.” 

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Taliban fighters maintain their weapons as they have fun one 12 months since they seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, in entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, Aug. 15. (AP/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Otunbayeva informed reporters that the Taliban “came from battles, from the mountains,” and that “to immediately turn them to the people who would sit [and] accept [is] not easy.” In her meetings with de-facto ministers, Otunbayeva mentioned that some Taliban members declare to help instructional entry for ladies and say the ban has been made by higher-ups. 

Roggio mentioned Otunbayeva “has fallen into the same trap as many apologists for the Taliban: she is regurgitating Taliban talking points given behind closed doors that give the appearance of a moderate Taliban willing to give rights to women. The Taliban remains united on the issue of oppressing women, and I challenge her to name an influential leader that disagrees.” 

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The Taliban weren’t invited to the primary Doha summit in May 2023. They refused to participate in a second convention in February after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres mentioned they delivered situations that “denied us the right to talk to other representatives of Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, to a large extent, be similar to recognition.” 

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the secretary-general, told reporters last week that “in no way should any of the meetings between U.N. officials and the envoys be seen as an official recognition of the Taliban as the government or legitimization.”