Taliban recognition talks neglect reality for beleaguered Afghans
Beth Bailey
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Despite the abhorrent conditions for Afghan people under Taliban rule, the West is shifting ever closer to recognizing the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan.
On April 18, the United Nations’s deputy secretary general announced plans to host a meeting to consider Taliban recognition. After a closed-door, two-day U.N. conference in Doha, Secretary-General António Guterres announced on May 2 that the U.N. would pursue “constructive engagement” with the Taliban based on lessons learned.
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Guterres said the U.N. may meet with the Taliban directly at “the right moment.” In a lengthy but aptly lambasted Foreign Policy article from May 24, former CIA officer Douglas London and former Afghan ambassador Javid Ahmad argued the U.S. “should diplomatically recognize” the Taliban.
The world’s slow walk toward recognizing the Taliban is familiar to me. I began working in intelligence in support of the Afghan war in late 2010. By the time I left my career in 2013, the U.S. was engaged in negotiations with an ascendant Taliban. I was fervently opposed to this development.
It seemed U.S. leaders were pretending that the Taliban could behave like rational actors on the international stage purely to secure an expedient withdrawal agreement. I felt a withdrawal based on assurances from the Taliban would only extricate Western forces from war. I worried the Taliban would visit vengeance and terror upon the Afghan populace — especially our former allies.
Nine years later, my fears were realized. Subsequent to our withdrawal, Afghan women have been stripped of their human rights — a fact Ahmad and London barely mention in their pro-recognition diatribe. Afghan women cannot leave their homes without a burqa, or attend work, travel, or leave the country without a male escort.
Girls and women are barred from education above the sixth grade and have been subject to rape and forced marriage by Taliban fighters. A recent investigation found that women imprisoned by the Taliban in three Afghan provinces endured rape, torture, forced abortions, and killings at the hands of their captors.
The Taliban practice gruesome retaliation against their enemies. Their reprisal campaign against Western allies has been a poorly kept secret since the group took power in August 2021, with incidents increasing in recent months. The return of mass public punishment has led to homosexuals, adulterers, and thieves being flogged or stoned in sports arenas. When the U.N. recently asked the Taliban to cease such behaviors, the Taliban foreign minister explained that “in the event of a conflict between international human rights law and Islamic law, the [Taliban] government is obliged to follow the Islamic law.”
Despite assurances that terror groups will not be allowed to operate in Afghanistan, evacuation volunteer Leslie Merriman counts 28 terror groups operating there. Her sources indicate that the leader of al Qaeda and two sons of Osama bin Laden, who were believed to have been killed in drone strikes, are in Afghanistan planning a large operation. The Taliban are also converting schools into madrassas, where students will be indoctrinated into their cruel interpretation of Islam.
There are notable changes between the Taliban of 1996-2001 and the Taliban of today. Opium cultivation, banned under the prior regime, is now tacitly accepted and remains a major income source for senior Taliban leaders. Bacha bazi, the pedophilic practice in which boys dance for and sexually gratify men, was previously outlawed. Now, numerous Talibs appear to have dancing boys.
In addition to their heinous governance, Taliban leaders have not supported the most basic needs of their people. Despite appropriations from the U.S. alone of more than $2.1 billion to Afghanistan since August 2021, six million Afghans are on the “brink of starvation,” with 28 million more needing “urgent humanitarian assistance.”
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Westerners supporting recognition of the Taliban today exhibit the same baseless hopes about Taliban rationality that motivated the U.S. to pursue negotiations in 2013. For the Afghans living in hell on earth under their rule, we must take recognition of the Taliban off the table.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.