Is the global community about to betray Afghanistan again?

Former Afghanistan ambassador to the UK Ahmad Wali Massoud highlights how a little-known conference happening in Qatar could determine his nation’s future

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Even though Gaza and the Ukraine currently dominate the international agenda, the world will be making a costly mistake if it does not pay close attention to a crucial two-day United Nations meeting starting on Sunday.

Attention spans can be short in the foreign policy space. Some may have forgotten the chaotic withdrawal of the American-led force from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the violent takeover by the Taliban that settled the fate of my nation. It was as if the seizing of power legitimized the rule of the minority clique of the ultra-extremist Taliban.

I speak for the suppressed majority of our people inside the country when I say this is a colossal misjudgment.

For the past two and a half years, Afghanistan has endured the absence of legitimate governance, the rule of law, and has suffered from severe human rights abuses, some unparalleled in human history. Gender apartheid has been imposed on the entire female population of the country, and national, regional, and international terrorist groups have come to control a geographical area of 650,000 km², which is bigger than France.

The groups now ruling with a gun have complete freedom to exercise military and ideological control through violence, often involving suicide brigades, and supported by a network of brainwashing madrassas.

At the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), one of the most effective and organized opposition movements to the Taliban, it is our duty to keep hope alive by shaping a very different future narrative for Afghanistan. We stand for democratic rule, legitimized and scrutinized through elections; we stand for inclusivity, no matter what ethnicity, faith, ideology, or gender; and we stand for transparent, forward-looking government.

These are the principles that cost the life of my own late brother, Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated on the eve of 9/11 by extremists collaborating with the Taliban. And these are the principles that continue to cost lives among the many brave NRF freedom fighters deployed mainly in the north of Afghanistan where they strive to root out Taliban influence from a growing swathe of liberated territory.

Crucially, these are the principles that we now urge to frame the debate at the UN meeting scheduled to be held shortly in Doha, Qatar. Hosted by Secretary-General António Guterres, the meeting draws from the international community to bring together all the Special Envoys and Special Representatives engaged with Afghanistan.

Their principal agenda is to consider a 19-page assessment of the country, commissioned by Secretary-General Guterres in the middle of last year, completed in November and disseminated to foreign capitals just a few weeks ago. The assessment covers how the international community can best help Afghanistan today as it struggles with a wide range of challenges: political, economic, and social.

We at the NRF recognize the hard work that went into the assessment. But we must point out some fundamental problems with the process and urge the international community to be vigilant on matters of principle and beware of short-term fixes.

What is striking is that representatives of the majority of Afghanistan’s people, groups such as the NRF, have not yet been invited to the meeting. Extremists from the Taliban, who have long enjoyed comfortable support from Qatar, will be there but not the representatives of Afghanistan’s suppressed majority. We urge the UN leadership not to proceed substantively without meaningful engagement from the people of Afghanistan.

To do otherwise would be to repeat the mistakes of the past when foreign powers have sought to magic a top-down solution on nation-building, not to secure a ground-up organic model.

But what is most concerning is that more than two years after the Taliban returned to power, there appear to be signs of what might be called `diplomatic mission creep’. While the international community strongly refused to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government after the chaotic withdrawal of the US, the UK and other allied forces, the 19-page report contains worrying hints that this might be changing.

That would be a betrayal of not only the majority of Afghanistan’s people but of every soldier – both living and dead – from the global alliance that for so long tried to stop just such a fate befalling my countrymen.

We regard as deplorable China’s willingness to formally recognize the credentials of a Taliban-appointed ambassador to Beijing. Such instances of normalization, including certain regional countries sending officials to attend a Taliban-chaired meeting just two weeks ago in Kabul, are nothing but geopolitical posturing exploited by the Taliban regime.

Now is not the time for such appeasement. Withholding recognition of the Taliban regime is the one clear source of leverage that the international community retains.

We all know how badly women and girls fare in Afghanistan under the Taliban today. To grant the Taliban diplomatic recognition would be yet another international betrayal, and one that this time also includes generations of Afghan women.

Doha has heard many grand promises on Afghanistan. During the US-brokered `peace talks” with the Taliban from 2019 onwards, we heard undertakings in the marbled corridors of the lavish venue provided by the Qatari government that the Taliban would protect the rights of women, that it would start inclusive political negotiations with rival groupings including mine, and that it would clamp down on foreign militant groups proscribed by the international community as terrorist.

Each of those promises turned out to be a lie.

As ever we salute those in the international community who come as honest brokers to help us build a new Afghanistan. But we warn against those willing to compromise on fundamental principles.

With the present instability in our world, my country is more strategically and symbolically important than ever. That is why all of us must stand firm against intolerance, extremism, and cruelty at this crucial time.

Ahmad Wali Massoud is member of the Political Council of National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and former Ambassador of Afghanistan to the United Kingdom