The international community is resigned to dealing with the Taliban, but avoids recognizing their government

In Afghanistan, women and girls traditionally receive less and worse food than men. For that and other reasons, they suffer more from hunger and disease. After many NGOs suspended their activities in December in response to the Taliban's ban on continuing to employ women, humanitarian aid to 11.6 million Afghans was reduced, warns the International Crisis Group think tank. The protest of these organizations thus paradoxically turned against the Afghan ones, an example of the impasse facing the international community in Afghanistan. At the crossroads between severing all ties with fundamentalists in the government and abandoning the most vulnerable Afghans, or taking steps toward international recognition of their power in exchange for restraint, the UN and Western governments have chosen to continue dealing with the Taliban, but without recognizing them. Nor have Russia and China yet officially legitimized them, but they have concluded trade agreements with them.

On May 1 and 2, the United Nations held a meeting in Doha (Qatar) with the special envoys for Afghanistan of the States of the region; major international donors; The United States, Russia and the European Union, whose purpose was to define a joint strategy to deal with the fundamentalists, who returned to power in August 2021 after the departure of troops from Washington and the collapse of the Executive of Ashraf Ghani. At the end, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, denied that during the meeting the Taliban government had been recognized – a fear expressed by many Afghans on social networks – and listed the conditions they do not meet for it. These requirements are the same as those that the US, the EU, and even Russia define as essential to give legitimacy to fundamentalists; that Afghanistan ceases to harbour terrorist groups; that the Afghan government includes different political sensitivities and ethnicities, as well as women, whose rights it is urged to respect, and that the country ceases to be the world's leading producer of heroin, according to the UN.

Two weeks before that summit, Guterres' number two, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, had fueled rumors by expressing her "hope" that "baby steps" would begin to be taken towards international recognition of the de facto Afghan government "with conditions." These words caused such an outrage in the Afghan diaspora that Guterres' spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, was forced to deny that possibility.

According to the Afghan daily Hash-e-Subh, some diplomats present in Doha said that this normalization would have been addressed at the meeting had it not been for the angry reaction of many Afghans. Those in favor of moving towards recognition consider that the best international negotiating card for the Taliban to moderate is the promise with conditions of an easing of sanctions against them and the possible return of the 9,000 million dollars (8,100 million euros) of Afghan funds frozen in banks in the United States and Europe.

In Doha, Guterres confirmed that the UN has not opted for the opposite path, which many Afghans, especially in the diaspora, demand: cutting all ties with the current Kabul administration. The secretary-general said the United Nations would remain in Afghanistan and humanitarian aid would continue. On April 4, after fundamentalists banned Afghan women from working for the United Nations, the organization threatened a complete withdrawal from the country. Had that threat been fulfilled, the 28.3 million Afghans (out of 40.1 million inhabitants) who will need assistance in 2023, according to the UN, would have been left to fend for themselves.

This latest veto affects only 400 local UN employees, but it is a statement of inflexibility by fundamentalists on the issue of women's rights, in the face of an organization that has been asking them for months to reverse other bans with more serious consequences. One is that of December 24, which forced NGOs to stop employing the 50,000 Afghan workers in the sector, who carry out vital work so that humanitarian aid reaches the female population. Another ban, on December 20, had already left all students over the age of 12 without education by closing the doors of universities to them. Secondary schools for girls had been closed since September 2021.

"Commitment"

Like many Afghans, Lailuma Sadid, president of the Network of Associations of the Afghan Diaspora in Europe, believes that nothing justifies "recognizing a terrorist group like the Taliban" and dismisses that possible international recognition is an international bargaining chip. Sadid believes that such a decision would strengthen the fundamentalists and "have a harmful effect on Afghan women."

Laila Basim, one of the leaders of the Afghan Women's Protest Movement, agrees from Kabul, especially when it comes to the rights of Afghan women: "The Taliban are an ideological group and in no case will they abandon their beliefs about women. For them, the beginning and end [of that ideology] is that women do not have the right to work, education or political participation. Even if they are recognized, they will never accept women in society," she explains via WhatsApp. Analysts attribute these successive broadsides against Afghan women to the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his inner circle in the southern city of Kandahar. Akhundzada is an ultraconservative who has so far not deigned to receive any foreign delegation.

For the German MEP of the Greens Hannah Neumann, president of the delegation of the European Parliament for relations with the Arabian peninsula and vice president of the subcommittee on Human Rights of the body, "those who hold power are the hard core around Kandahar and its emir. These peopleare totally obsessed with their image of a purely Islamic society, where men must be purified of Western influences and women have no role." I do not believe that acknowledging them will influence them. It's the wrong way to go," he says.

The United Nations has not completely closed that door. Appearing in Doha, Guterres said he was ready to meet with fundamentalists "when the time is right." He then stressed the need for "engagement" with Afghanistan, an idea Neumann does not disagree with. The MEP advocates "finding a way to talk to the Taliban about things like access to humanitarian aid" because "whether we like it or not, they have won this war and are in power." Now, she stresses, "the international community can help Afghan women who are resisting and saying, 'We have already fought that fight and we are going to fight it again.'"

The idea of commitment in order to continue helping Afghans without recognizing the fundamentalist Afghan government is not without risks, according to the American security think tank Just Security. One is that "states eventually arrive at what the philosopher Avishai Margalit calls a rotten compromise, that is, an agreement that establishes or maintains an inhuman political order based on systematic cruelty and humiliation as its permanent characteristics." The International Crisis Group argues that, right now, there is "no good option" for the international community in Afghanistan.

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