The foreign minister of Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which is not recognized by any other nation, was yesterday to hold talks with his counterparts from Pakistan and China during a rare visit abroad.
Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi is barred by international sanctions from leaving his country, but was granted an exemption for a trip to Islamabad just days after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again condemned the Taliban government’s curbs on women.
China and Pakistan are Afghanistan’s most important neighbors, with Beijing eyeing the vast untapped mineral resources that lie across their few kilometers-long shared border, while Islamabad is wary of huge security risks along their much longer common frontier.
Photo: AP
The Afghan delegation, which also included the minister of commerce and industry, was one of the most high-profile groups to travel abroad since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces and the collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government.
KABUL TIES SOUGHT
“The biggest significance of this summit is that at this moment, as we understand it, no regional economic future is possible without the stability of Afghanistan,” said Maria Sultan, director general of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, a Pakistan-based think tank. “It is also important that a formal relationship should be established, and this is only possible if there is working reconstruction of the diplomatic track.”
The visit came amid a flurry of diplomacy about — but not necessarily involving — Afghanistan’s new rulers.
Earlier this week, Guterres told a meeting of envoys from the US, Russia, China, and 20 other countries and organizations that “millions of women and girls are being silenced and erased from sight” in the country.
However, Taliban officials were not invited, an omission that a representative called “counterproductive.”
Also this week, a meeting in India of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — of which Kabul has observer status — discussed Afghanistan without the presence of any representatives.
On Friday, the UN reaffirmed its “commitment to stay” in Afghanistan in a review in light of the Taliban government banning local women from working for the world body there.
In a statement issued from Kabul, the UN’s mission in Afghanistan reiterated its condemnation of the ban, saying that it “seriously undermines our work, including our ability to reach all people in need.”
“We cannot disengage despite the challenges,” it said.
The Taliban government has firmly rejected criticism of the curbs on women, calling them an “internal social issue.”
HUNGER WOES
Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with about half of its 38 million population facing food insecurity and about 3 million children at risk of malnutrition, international aid agencies have said.
Since returning to power, the Taliban authorities have imposed an austere version of Shariah law that the UN has labeled “gender-based apartheid.”
Teenage girls are barred from secondary school, while women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from traveling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside the home, ideally with a burqa.
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