Excluding women from Afghanistan talks is indefensible

Supporters of Afghan women hold a protest in Islamabad, Pakistan on June 10. A third round of UN-led talks on Afghanistan’s future ended in Doha yesterday but female Afghans were not allowed to take pShow more

When Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada banned the cultivation of the opium poppy in April 2022 it was a move that, at first glance, seemed to be a positive one. For many years, Afghanistan had the dubious distinction of being the world’s number one opiate supplier, contributing to the global trade in illegal drugs that is intimately tied to corruption, terrorism and organised crime.

Since the Taliban crackdown, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has declined by 95 per cent, according to a 2023 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The growing and harvesting of the crop has been eroded across the country, dramatically reducing the supply of opium and export quality heroin coming out of Afghanistan, falling from the 6,200 tonnes produced in 2022 to 333 tonnes last year. Given that opium production in some provinces was a deeply entrenched practice for many years, the Taliban’s move appeared to be a rare success story for a country torn apart by decades of war, economic hardship and extremist rule.

While there is no denying that any measures to stop illegal drugs are welcome and necessary, the issue is more complex than that. For many in Afghanistan’s impoverished rural and agricultural communities, the banning of the poppy deprived them of their main source of income, without a plan to put in place for another source of income. Alternative crops, such as wheat, have proven impractical. According to a 2023 report from the US Institute for Peace think tank, as poorer households go through their existing stocks of opium, they are forced into more extreme coping strategies, such as “selling livestock and other remaining assets, eschewing medical care and medicines, eating less and lower-quality food, sending family members out of the country, or even marrying off daughters prematurely”.

Indeed, it is often Afghan girls and women who are at the sharp end of rural poverty. According to Save the Children, to ease their financial burden, many families are forced to send their daughters out to work. When coupled with the general marginalisation of women by the current government – such as depriving girls of their right to a full education, public and political participation as well as free movement – one would expect responsible discussions about solving Afghanistan’s interlinked drug and poverty issues to include women. Sadly, this is not so.

A third round of UN-led talks on Afghanistan’s future ended in Doha yesterday, with special envoys from 25 countries working to engage the Taliban on issues including the economy, aid, security – and narcotics. And yet, Afghan women were excluded from talks. “I don’t have words to express my frustration,” Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan parliamentarian and women’s rights activist told The National. “Because the same institution that is supposed to protect world order, justice and dignity of human beings is betraying us this time.”

The absence of Afghan women from the conference has not gone unnoticed. Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban as she travelled home from school at the age of 15, called the decision to exclude Afghan women unacceptable.

This newspaper has argued that those who care about Afghanistan must find a way to work with the country’s de facto authorities, noting in August last year how “intransigent refusals to engage with the Taliban have proved ineffectual … the effect of these policies serves only to maintain the stalemate and has done little to persuade the Taliban to change their behaviour towards their own people”.

But for anyone to insist that women be excluded from such important dialogue on the country’s future is a mistake. Dismissing the voices of capable, educated citizens with in-depth understanding of how issues such as the drug trade affects women and girls in rural communities will do no favours for the people of Afghanistan. It is difficult to imagine a comparable international conference from which women are relegated to the sidelines; in this case, the UN has some soul searching to do.