DOHA, Qatar (AP) — A closed-door summit on Afghanistan ended Tuesday in Qatar with none formal acknowledgment of the Taliban-controlled authorities there, although the United Nations’ chief stated they’d maintain one other assembly sooner or later.
U.N. Secretary-Normal António Guterres attended the summit, which the world physique described as nations and organizations making an attempt to succeed in unified stances on human rights, governance, counterterrorism and anti-drug efforts. No recognition had been anticipated to return out of the assembly, although activists in latest days criticized the chance.
“To attain our goals, we can’t disengage,” Guterres stated. “And lots of referred to as for engagement to be more practical and primarily based on classes we’ve realized from the previous.”
He didn’t elaborate, although the Taliban beforehand managed Afghanistan from 1994 to 2001.
Requested by a journalist if there can be any circumstance below which he’d be wiling to instantly meet with the Taliban, Guterres stated: “When it’s the proper second to take action, I’ll clearly not refuse that risk — however at present isn’t the proper second to take action.”
Absent from the assembly have been the Taliban themselves, who took over Afghanistan in August 2021.
Suhail Shaheen, the top of the Taliban’s political workplace in Doha, informed The Related Press that the brand new Afghan authorities dismissed the talks.
“If they aren’t prepared to listen to us and know our place relating to the problems, how can they attain a convincing and palatable resolution?” Shaheen stated. “One-sided selections couldn’t ship. Afghanistan is an impartial nation. It has its personal voice; we would like them to take heed to our voice.”
Shaheen on Sunday met Andrew McCoubrey, director of Afghanistan and Pakistan at the UK’s Overseas Workplace, and Yue Xiaoyong, China’s particular envoy for Afghanistan, in Doha. Within the time because the Taliban seizing energy, Afghanistan has change into probably the most repressive on the planet for girls and ladies, disadvantaged of nearly all their primary rights, in keeping with the U.N.
Ladies are banned from schooling past sixth grade and ladies are barred from working, finding out, touring and not using a male companion, and even going to parks or tub homes. Girls should additionally cowl themselves from head to toe and are barred from working at nationwide and worldwide non-governmental organizations, disrupting the supply of humanitarian help. Afghanistan stays wracked by poverty and starvation, squeezed like different nations by Russia’s struggle on Ukraine.
In the meantime, considerations stay over Afghanistan once more turning into a haven for Islamic extremists eager to strike out overseas. The U.S.-led 2001 invasion got here on the again of al-Qaida’s Sept. 11 assault on New York and Washington. For the reason that takeover, the U.S. has carried out drone strikes concentrating on suspected militants.
These considerations have difficult how nations, significantly the West, cope with Afghanistan at present.
Activists had anxious the Qatar summit might see the worldwide group attain a recognition cope with the Taliban whilst ladies stay largely barred from society.
The Taliban are “a terrorist group whose deeply repressive regime has systematically sought to erase greater than half of the inhabitants from society,” an open letter from the activists learn. “Having denied ladies and ladies virtually all of their basic human rights, the Taliban has change into the one regime on the planet upholding a system of gender apartheid.”
The international locations that took half within the Doha summit included China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, the US and Uzbekistan.
Qatar, an energy-rich nation on the Arabian Peninsula which lengthy hosted a political workplace for the Taliban, hosted the talks.
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Related Press writers Riazat Butt in Islamabad, Edith M. Lederer on the United Nations and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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Comply with Lujain Jo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lujainjo.