Taliban hold diplomatic talks in Doha

DOHA:Representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban government began meetings on Sunday with UN officials as they attended talks in the Qatari capital with special envoys to the Central Asian country for the first time, a UN spokesperson said.

Though it is the first of its sort to involve Taliban leaders, the two-day UN-hosted conference in Doha is the third of its kind in less than a year. “The UN has started preparatory talks with the Taliban representatives and many of the special envoys present at a separate meeting,” a UN spokeswoman said.

The team of the Taliban administration, led by spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, was set to meet with representatives of the UN and more than 20 envoys, including the US special representative to Afghanistan. The purpose of the talks was to consider stepping up cooperation with Afghanistan.

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Following the Taliban’s 2021 comeback to power, the international world has struggled with how to deal with the country’s new leaders. Other states have not formally recognized the Taliban in Kabul due to concerns such rules pertaining to women, which the UN refers to as “gender apartheid.”

The Taliban leadership insisted that their delegation be the only delegates from Afghanistan, therefore they were not allowed to join the second round of UN negotiations in February 2023 after being barred from the first round in May 2023.

Civil society organizations were left out of the campaign to include Taliban government representatives; instead, they will meet with representatives on Tuesday. According to Zakir Jalaly, an official in the Taliban foreign ministry, such talks had nothing to do with the formal agenda.

Women’s rights activists were among the groups who expressed outrage at the marginalization of civil society organizations. Agnes Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, stated in a statement prior to the negotiations that “caving in to the Taliban’s conditions to secure their participation in the talks would risk legitimizing their gender-based institutionalized system of oppression.”

At a press conference in Kabul on Saturday, Mujahid stated that while Taliban leaders “acknowledge the issues about women,” they are “Afghanistan’s issues” to resolve. Expert on Afghanistan Hameed Hakimi told AFP that women’s rights and the function of civil society in the nation were issues that the international world was “genuinely” worried about.

However, he clarified that “international policy makers recognize that there is this gap that has not been filled by the Afghans themselves, even though they accept the Taliban are not perfect players in the game.”

In reaction to the Taliban authorities’ return to power in recent years, several nations, international organizations, and aid agencies severed or stopped providing assistance to Afghanistan, which seriously harmed the country’s already fragile economy.

The Britain-based Chatham House expert clarified, “On the one hand, there is a humanitarian situation that requires funding, on the other hand you can’t alleviate the humanitarian situation without the political engagement.”

The Taliban government team met with special envoys from Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan in Doha prior to the UN-hosted talks. Mujahid stated on Twitter’s predecessor, X.