Afghanistan Taliban reconciliation

The reconciliation process led by the Karzai regime to re-integrate violent Taliban members, or "angry brothers", into the political process, is already causing fear, distrust and injustice for the most vulnerable members of the population: women.

The process has delivered nothing positive in return for what seems like a large-scale surrender of Afghans' hard-won civil rights. Atrocious leadership by the government and a cowardly unwillingness by the international community to hold them to account is the cause of this debacle.

More on this from Wazhma Frogh, an Afghan women’s rights activist, and a Chevening Scholar.

As reported by Human Rights Watch this month, the “night letters” (threatening letters left at night by the Taliban), death threats, and assassinations of female politicians and activists are all squarely the doings of the militants. If anyone at all in the West remembers the oppressive regime of the Taliban’s that was in power until 2001, how can we ignore the current barbaric treatment of women and girls in the militant controlled areas? How many women and girls are able to go to school in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand anymore?

Not only there, but in provinces like Wardak and Logar, which are are only an hour away from the capital, the doors of education and work have closed for women. How could anyone believe that the same militants who controlled the country from 1996-2001, if back in political power in the not so distant future, would respect the Afghan Constitution, which the Taliban have made clear they vehemently despise?

While the Peace and Reintegration Plan has already started releasing militant prisoners without any proper legal scrutiny, 476 women languish in one of Kabul's jails, most of whom should never have been imprisoned in the first place. According to a recent BBC report, half the women are jailed for so called ‘moral crimes,' like adultery or running away from home.

Meanwhile the militants kill, behead and torture Afghans and these are not considered ‘moral crimes'. President Hamid Karzai calls them merely ‘angry brothers', as he did in a recent speech. This is the political dilemma of Afghanistan, and the ethical responsibility of the international community.