A senior Taliban official echoed the group’s still-unfulfilled promise to allow girls to return to high school, saying there would be “good news soon”. However, he suggested that women protesting the regime’s restrictions on their rights should stay at home.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s interim minister of the interior and deputy Taliban leader since 2016, made the comments in an exclusive interview with journalist Christiane Amanpour of the CNN in Kabul, in what is the first press conference recorded on camera and showing his face.
In March, after many promises that girls could attend secondary school, the Taliban reversed their decision, delaying their return indefinitely.
When asked about Afghan women who say they are afraid to leave their home under the group’s rule, and about those who report a frightening effect of the organization’s leadership, Haqqani added with a laugh: “We keep disobedient women at home.”
After being pressed by Amanpour to clarify his comment, he said: “By saying disobedient women, I made a joke referring to those disobedient women who are controlled by some other sides and who question the current government.”
Haqqani also set some parameters for the future of women and work, which will be constrained by the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law and “national, cultural and traditional principles.”
“They can work within their own structure,” he said.
The Taliban minister spoke in his first on-camera interview with a Western media outlet in years, just months after showing his face in public for the first time. The high-ranking, intensely secretive officer is wanted by the FBI and has been classified by the US State Department as a “specially designated global terrorist”. A $10 million bounty is offered for him.
Comments on girls’ education and women’s rights punctuated a series of allegations that “there is no one against (girls’) education” in the Afghan government.
“Girls can go to school up to the 6th grade and, above that grade, the work is to continue in a mechanism,” said Haqqani. “Very soon, you will hear very good news on this matter, God willing,” he added, without specifying a timeframe.
After the meeting, Haqqani’s advisers noted that the interview was an effort to open a new chapter in relations with the United States and the rest of the world.
Since taking Afghanistan last August, the Taliban has repeatedly assured the international community that they will protect the rights of women and girls, while at the same time taking away many freedoms and protections from them.
No prospect of change
Many school-age girls and women have already given up hope. “All the government [é] against girls’ education,” Maryam, 19, told CNN on Tuesday (17). “I don’t believe the Taliban keep their promises […] they don’t understand our feelings.”
“Step by step, they are taking all our freedoms,” added 17-year-old Fátima. “The Taliban now and the Taliban of the 1990s are the same – I don’t see any change in their policies and rules,” she continued.
“Our only hope is that the international community will put extreme pressure on the Taliban to allow girls to attend school. Nothing else will work,” the young woman concluded.
Maryam and Fátima, as well as other women with whom the CNN spoke, did not provide their last names due to concerns about their safety.
Haqqani’s comments likely did little to encourage international observers that the Taliban are serious about their commitments. “Everyone in the Taliban leadership has zero credibility on this issue,” said Heather Barr, associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at the international organization Human Rights Watch.
“They’ve made representations about their supposed respect for women and girls” since taking power, Barr added. “Every day after that, there was a new crackdown on them, and that continued to intensify over time,” he said.
G7 foreign ministers and the European Union’s High Representative last week expressed their “stronger opposition” to the Taliban’s growing restrictions on the rights of women and girls.
Haqqani commented to CNN that the “judgments, research and decision-making of the international community are all unilateral”, adding: “We are still in the preliminary phase. It’s only been eight months since we took over the government […] We still need to bring the situation back to normal.”
After seizing power, the Taliban warned women to stay home and their fighters used whips and sticks against protesters. In the following months, they were banned from large parts of public life – from appearing on television to taking long trips alone. A new decree earlier this month mandates that women must cover their faces in public.
When pressed by Amanpour on whether all women should cover their faces, Haqqani replied: “We are not forcing women to wear [o] hijab, but we are counseling and preaching to them from time to time […] that the hijab is not mandatory, but it is an Islamic order that everyone must implement.”
On the streets of Kabul, the increasing isolation of women from society has led to economic risks. “I have to work,” she told the CNN a woman named Khotima. “They must let us work, because we have to assume the role of the man in the family to find bread for the children”.
“When you have no money, when you have no job, you have no income. Can you eat proper food when you don’t have work?” asked another woman named Farishta.
The US is not an enemy “currently”
Haqqani spoke with the CNN two months after the Taliban released rare photos of the minister at a ceremony for police officers. Before that, he was rarely seen in public; his FBI poster for “Most Wanted” features only a grainy image of part of his face.
He is wanted by the agency for questioning over a 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul that killed six people, including a US citizen; the US government says the interim minister admitted to planning the attack in a previous media interview. He is part of the family that forms the Haqqani network, an Islamic militant organization founded by his father Jalaluddin Haqqani, which was designated by the United States as a terrorist group in 2012.
The authority told the CNN that: “in the future, we would like to have good relations with the United States and the international community”, adding: “currently we do not see them as enemies”.
But, he made repeated assurances about women’s rights and education for girls that were at odds with the observations of watchdogs and global governments.
“The international community is raising the issue of women’s rights a lot. Here in Afghanistan, there are Islamic, national, cultural and traditional principles,” she pondered. “Within the limits of these principles, we are working to offer them job opportunities and that is our objective”, she added.
In December, the Taliban issued a so-called “decree on women’s rights” that made no mention of access to education or work and was immediately criticized by Afghan women and experts, who said it was proof that the militant group did not he was interested in defending the basic liberties of millions of women.
Afghan girls above the 6th grade were due to return to school in March, for the first time since the Taliban takeover, but have been instructed to stay at home until an appropriate school uniform that is in accordance with Sharia and customs and Afghan culture was designed, the Taliban-run news agency Bakhtar reported at the time.
Haqqani highlighted to the CNN that the delay was necessary as leaders designed the “mechanism” by which girls can return to education. “There were some flaws in the preparations that were underway. Work is being done on these issues,” she said.
Experts have expressed skepticism that their motives are different, as was the case between 1996 and 2001, when the first Taliban regime banned girls from studying.
“They always said that the ideal conditions are not now, [mas eles deveriam] resolve,” said Barr. “In these five years, that moment has never come. So very clearly for women and girls, this has always been a lie, and that’s how it’s looking this time too.”
The interim minister was also asked about the status of Mark Frerichs, a veteran and US contractor who was kidnapped in Kabul in late January 2020 and is believed to be being held by the Haqqani network.
A proof-of-life video, apparently filmed in November 2021, surfaced in April of this year, in which Frerichs said: “I would like to ask the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to please release me. Release me so I can be reunited with my family.”
About this, Haqqani told the CNN : “This is what they think, that he is with us […] There is no obstacle from the Emirati side to his release. If the United States accepts the Islamic Emirate’s conditions, the issue of his release could be resolved within a day.
“On the assumptions that he might be with us, I mean that we are part of the Islamic Emirate, we are committed to obeying the orders of Amirul Momineen, the Supreme Leader,” he added. “Efforts are ongoing at the government level and a team is assigned to negotiate with them.”
When approached for comment, a US State Department spokesperson pointed out to the CNN : “The safe and immediate release of US citizen and Navy veteran Mark Frerichs is imperative. We made that clear to the Taliban and asked them to release him immediately in virtually every conversation we’ve had over the past two years.”
*Rob Picheta, Jack Guy and Madalena Araujo, from CNN contributed to this report
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
