Oslo:
Talks in Oslo on Sunday between the Taliban and Afghan civil society members served as an “icebreaker” on the eve of their meeting with Western diplomats to discuss human rights and the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, one Afghan participant said.
The first Taliban delegation to visit Europe since the hardline Islamists returned to power there, led by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, spent the first day of their three-day visit with women activists and journalists, among others.
“It was a positive meeting to break the ice,” feminist activist Jamila Afghani told AFP. The negotiators “showed goodwill… Let’s see what their actions will be, based on their words,” she added.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a tweet: “All Afghans must work together for better political, economic and security outcomes…”
“The participants… recognized that understanding and joint cooperation are the only solutions.”
The closed-door discussions, facilitated by Norway, take place at the Soria Moria Hotel, on a snowy hilltop outside Oslo.
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated dramatically since last August, when the Taliban returned to power, 20 years after they were overthrown.
International aid stalled, exacerbating the plight of millions of people already starving after several severe droughts.
Protests outside the ministry
The hardline Islamists were ousted in 2001 by a US-led coalition, but took over after a hasty withdrawal by international forces.
No country has yet recognized the Taliban government, and Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stressed Friday that the talks “would not legitimize or recognize the Taliban”, but that country’s humanitarian crisis needed to be addressed.
Several dozen people protested outside the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, an AFP journalist on site reported.
One of them, Shala Sultani, said the talks amounted to “smiles in the face” of Afghans who have lost relatives. “You don’t talk to terrorists,” she said.
On Monday, the Taliban will meet representatives from the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and the European Union. They will meet with Norwegian officials on Tuesday.
Thomas West, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan, tweeted Sunday: “As we seek to address the humanitarian crisis together with allies, partners and aid agencies, we will continue diplomacy with the Taliban with clear eyes regarding our concerns and our continued interest in a stable, rights-respecting and inclusive Afghanistan.”
The delegation from Kabul is joined by Anas Haqqani, a leader of the most feared and violent faction of the Taliban movement — the Haqqani Network, responsible for some of the most devastating attacks in Afghanistan.
He spent several years in the United States’ Bagram Detention Center outside the capital, Kabul, before being released in 2019 in a prisoner swap.
‘Collective Punishment’
International aid funded about 80 percent of the Afghan budget until it was shut down in August, and the United States has frozen $9.5 billion in assets in the Afghan central bank.
Unemployment has skyrocketed and civil servants’ salaries have been unpaid for months.
Hunger now threatens 23 million Afghans, or 55 percent of the population, according to the United Nations, which says it will need $4.4 billion from donor countries this year to tackle the humanitarian crisis.
“It would be a mistake to subject the people of Afghanistan to collective punishment just because the de facto authorities are not behaving properly,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday.
The international community is waiting to see how the Taliban plan to rule after they were accused of violating human rights during their first stint in power between 1996 and 2001.
Although Islamists claim to have modernized, women are still largely excluded from public sector employment and most high schools for girls remain closed.
‘Gender Apartheid’
A former Afghan minister of mines and petrol now living in Norway, Nargis Nehan, told AFP she had declined an invitation to participate.
She said she feared the talks “would normalize and strengthen the Taliban when there is no possibility they will change”.
Two female activists disappeared from their homes in Kabul this week after participating in a demonstration.
Davood Moradian, the head of the Afghan Institute of Strategic Studies now based outside Afghanistan, criticized Norway’s “celebrity-style” peace initiative.
Hosting the Taliban’s foreign minister “casts doubts on Norway’s global image as a country that cares for women’s rights, when the Taliban has effectively implemented gender apartheid,” he said.
Norway has played a mediating role in many conflicts, including in the Middle East, Sri Lanka and Colombia.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)