A UN official said on Monday that UN-led meetings with the Taliban in Qatar about stepping up engagement in Afghanistan do not amount to recognition of the Taliban government.
The meeting of envoys from some two dozen countries in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Sunday and Monday marked the first time that representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime had attended such a UN-sponsored gathering.
The Taliban were not invited to the first round of talks, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in attending the second round in February that the Taliban had set unacceptable conditions, including excluding members of Afghan civilian society from the talks and treating the Taliban as the country’s legitimate rulers.
Afghan women not allowed to attend non-initiative meetings with Taliban: ‘giving in to terrorist demands’
Ahead of the Doha conference, Afghan women representatives were barred from attending the conference, paving the way for the Taliban to send an envoy, but organisers insisted there would be a push for women’s rights.
“We want to emphasize that this meeting and this negotiating process does not imply normalization or recognition,” U.N. political and peacebuilding official Rosemary A. DiCarlo said Monday.
“We hope that the constructive exchange of views on a range of issues over the past two days will bring us a little closer to resolving some of the issues that are having a devastating impact on the Afghan people,” she added.
In this photo released by the Taliban spokesman’s office, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who leads the Taliban delegation (center right), speaks with Russian presidential envoy Zamir Kabulov during a meeting in Doha, Qatar, Sunday, June 30, 2024. The Taliban delegation is attending a UN-led meeting on Afghanistan in Qatar after organizers said women would be excluded from the meeting. The two-day meeting is the third UN-sponsored meeting on the Afghanistan crisis. (Taliban Spokesperson’s Office via AP)
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who led the Doha delegation, said they would have the opportunity to meet with representatives from other countries on the sidelines of the conference.
He added that the Taliban’s message “reached” all countries at the conference. He said Afghanistan needed cooperation with the private sector and help in the fight against drugs. “Most countries expressed a willingness to cooperate in these areas.”
The Taliban seized power in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final week of withdrawing from Afghanistan after two decades of war. No country has officially recognized the Taliban, and the United Nations has said recognition is virtually impossible as long as bans on women’s education and employment remain in place.
However, some participants, including from Canada, expressed disappointment at the exclusion of women and civil society representatives.
“Canada is extremely disappointed that UN organizers excluded non-Taliban Afghan participants, including women’s advocacy groups, religious and ethnic minorities and human rights organizations, from the conference’s core sessions,” David Sproul, Canada’s special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement.
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“Over the past two days, women and civil society have not sat across the table from the de facto (Taliban) authorities, but we have listened to them… Civil society has a legitimate role to play in shaping Afghanistan’s future,” said Di Carlo, the U.N. official.
