Taliban leader Haibattullah Akhunzada and Qatari foreign minister
and prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met secretly in
Kandahar on 12 May, 2023
What was, or rather should have been, glaringly obvious was that
there was no mention of the rights of women and girls or indeed of any
human rights. Given Donald Trump’s attitudes towards women that was
perhaps not a surprise. What was and remains astonishing is that at the
time no one in a position of authority in the US State Department, the
Foreign Office here in the UK or foreign ministries of other allies such
as Canada remarked on this omission, despite it being a gross
dereliction of much of what the West claimed to be fighting for.
When Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani held his meeting with
Haibattullah it is to be expected that the Taliban’s vicious repression
of women and girls was high on the agenda. The Qatari PM had been lobbying publicly
for the Taliban to rescind their decisions to ban girls from high
school and university. They were concerned, too, at the banning of women
from most workplaces including humanitarian NGOs, many of which have suspended operations.
Al Thani would have suggested that the only way that Afghanistan’s
isolation could end would be to make steps in the direction of restoring
at least some rights. And that the isolation must end or else a looming
humanitarian disaster of epic proportions would befall the country of
40 million people. Already three quarters
of the population is in need of some form of aid. Twenty million are
acutely food insecure and within that figure 6 million are facing
starvation. The country remains in the grip of a nearly three year
drought. Health care systems have collapsed, insecurity is rampant,
unemployment soaring in a highly damaged economy.
It is a bitter irony for the women of Afghanistan (and those women
who have fled) that only now are their rights being used as a
negotiating ploy. Had the 2020 deal made even the most glancing of
references to the rights of women and girls, it would have sent a signal
to the Taliban. As it was, the only signal that Donald Trump sent was
to confirm that America was in a great rush to get out. The document
enormously strengthened
the Taliban hand and led directly to the chaotic and catastrophic
withdrawal in August of 2021 with district after district, city after
city and finally Kabul having fallen to them with remarkable ease.
Whether Haibattullah will have conceded some ground remains very much
to be seen. A reclusive leader known for his hard-line stance and
determination to rule Afghanistan under a medieval interpretation of
Islam, he is scarcely ever out of Kandahar. It is said that he is
suspicious of the Taliban who enjoyed a luxurious life in Doha, that
their religious fervour had been weakened by fine dining and extremely
comfortable surroundings. Any efforts from them to soften the Taliban
stand on women is viewed within the prism of his suspicion.
Another concern is the growing power of IS in Afghanistan, otherwise
known as Islamic State Khorasan Province or ISIS-K. After a period where
the group had been heavily degraded by US and Afghan army action,
ISIS-K has rebounded carrying out audacious attacks on Hazara, Sufi and
Shia minorities. But it is attacks on Kabul, including one on the foreign ministry that is underlining the inability of the Taliban regime to provide security for the people it is supposedly governing over.
Any move by Haibattullah to ease restrictions on women and girls will
be seized upon by ISIS-K as evidence that the Taliban leadership is
drifting away from the fanatical and perverse interpretation of Islam
that informs their zealotry. Defections to ISIS-K, already a cause of
concern, could accelerate. And the speed with which IS came to dominate
Syria and Iraq with initially a small band of jihadists remains fresh in
everyone’s memory.
The Qatari prime minister is a skilled diplomat who as foreign
minister guided the country through its worst crisis the 2017-21 land,
air and sea blockade by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt.
Negotiating solutions with a leader who sits in his Kandahar lair,
besieged by threats from fanatics even more extreme than he is and
facing a country on its knees may be a task too far. But for the sake of
the Afghan people it is to be hoped he has succeeded.