Muttaqi’s India visit hurts women of Afghanistan

New Delhi: India does not formally recognise the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Yet, for the first time ever, a senior member of the Taliban regime in that country, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, is due to visit India later this week, at the request of the Indian government. India even sought a special waiver for his visit from the United Nations’ 1988 Sanctions Committee.

Most members of the Taliban have been sanctioned as terrorists by the UN Security Council. Under Security Council resolution 1988, most Taliban-linked individuals face a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo for whom exceptions can be granted, by consensus, of all 15 UNSC members. Pakistan, a non-permanent UNSC member, currently chairs the Committee.

While there would be a variety of strategic and security-related reasons for India to invite Muttaqi to India, New Delhi’s decision is being seen by women of Afghanistan as a betrayal. Under the harsh edicts of the Taliban regime, women there have been deprived of most human rights, including the right to education and even assembly, and have been reduced to faceless entities in the background where it seems the world has forgotten them.

When Russia formally recognised the Taliban regime earlier this year, Afghan women were not so devastated as they have been by India’s overtures to the fundamentalist regime. Some Afghan women who managed to flee from Kabul when the Taliban 2.0 came rampaging back to power in August 2021, were bitter.

One woman, who cannot be identified for reasons of her security, said she was refused a visa to travel to India even though her life was threatened by the Taliban. Yet the Indian government is rolling out the red carpet for a member of the regime threatening her very existence.

Another woman, who must also remain unidentified, received an international award for her efforts to uphold human and women’s rights and keep the world informed about what was happening to her and women like her within Afghanistan. After the woman, who is part of a network of women who brought out the ZAN Times, an online newspaper seeking to highlight the problems women face just to survive under the harsh Taliban regime, was notified about the award, she looked forward to a brief reprieve from the harsh conditions of her life outside Kabul. Not only did the journalist, nurtured in the post-Taliban 1.0 era after 2001, not get a visa to come to India to receive the award, despite requests from the organisation giving the awards, she found herself endangered under her government’s critical scrutiny.

That India could turn down such legitimate visa requests seemed unfair and unkind to her.

“We don’t want charity, we just want a chance,” she said in despair to colleagues and interlocutors in India.

India made no outreach to the Taliban during their first tenure between 1996 and 2001. In fact, it actively opposed that regime, providing tacit support to the Northern Alliance led by Ahmed Shah Masood, which ousted Taliban 1.0.

Analysts said the international community’s constant scrutiny helped oust that harsh misogynist regime and helped women survive that stint of Taliban rule. This time, however, international interlocutors feel there is no credible opposition to the Taliban which, after four years in power, is in full control and there is no alternative power centre they could threaten to support. Collective efforts have yielded no flexibility or removal of draconian restrictions on women.

Before Taliban 2.0 took power, women’s economic empowerment was a national development priority, integral to Afghan growth and sustainability. On March 8, 2017, the Government of Afghanistan (GoIRA) launched the Women’s Economic Empowerment National Priority Program (WEE-NPP) “to support economic participation as a means to increase women’s agency in development.” Now, while closing most avenues of employment, the Taliban have moved to restrict women’s education and even visibility in public.

When the Taliban took control in August 2021, India evacuated its embassy and cancelled visas for Afghan nationals. Barely a year later, New Delhi stationed a “technical team” in Kabul to function as its de facto mission. Since then, Indian officials have routinely held meetings with Taliban representatives at regional forums. Though India has not recognised the Taliban, Afghan diplomatic missions in India are now staffed by Taliban-appointed officials. Bilateral engagement covers issues such as visa access for Afghan traders and patients, and repatriation of Afghan nationals detained in India. Not women’s issues.

The highest level contact before the forthcoming visit was External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s telephonic conversation with Muttaqi in May, shortly after hostilities of ‘Operation Sindoor’ ended.

However, Afghanistan’s women won a small victory when the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Taliban ‘Emir’ Saibatullah Akhundzada and the Taliban’s Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “for crimes against humanity of persecution against women and girls” because of the repressive laws they have enacted since 2021 and for brutally enforcing those laws.

“The ICC announcement comes at a time when the international community has slowly started to normalize and accept the Taliban’s regime. It serves as a reminder to the global community of its obligations to tackle impunity and not to recognize the Taliban,” the Atlantic Council stated. “Issuing warrants is the first step to holding the Taliban to account, validating the tireless efforts of the women and girls of Afghanistan to document, resist and dismantle the Taliban’s systematic gender-based oppression.”

India would do well to keep this in mind when Muttaqi comes calling.

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