KABUL (Dispatches) – Afghan women protesting against the Taliban’s rule say they have been betrayed by Norway, the first Western nation to host the group since they seized power in August.
Led by the foreign minister, a Taliban delegation travelled first class on a plane specially chartered by the Norwegian government to Oslo for meetings with Western officials and members of Afghan civil society.
Women activists who have been facing intimidation by the Taliban after staging small and scattered protests are outraged by the diplomatic efforts.
“I am sorry for such a country as Norway for organizing this summit,” said Wahida Amiri, an activist who has protested regularly in Kabul since the Taliban’s return.
“It saddens me a lot. Shame on the world for accepting this and opening doors to the Taliban,” she told AFP.
Several women -- too afraid to step outside -– instead protested in their homes in the cities of Kabul, Bamiyan and Mazar-i-Sharif, in images posted to social media.
Representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban-led interim government and Western diplomats have held three-day talks in Oslo to discuss the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the country and push for the release of assets frozen by the U.S. and its allies.
The closed-door meeting on Monday between the Taliban delegation led by the group’s top diplomat Amir Khan Muttaqi and representatives of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Norway and the European Union comes as millions of people in the crisis-stricken country stare at death and starvation.
Taliban officials have sought the release of international aid worth billions of dollars that was blocked by the U.S. and its allies following their botched exit from the South Asian country August last year.
“We are requesting them to unfreeze Afghan assets and not punish ordinary Afghans because of the political discourse,” Taliban delegate Shafiullah Azam was on Sunday quoted as saying by the AP.
“Because of the starvation, because of the deadly winter, I think it’s time for the international community to support Afghans, not punish them because of their political disputes.”
Western countries have tied the humanitarian assistance to observance of human rights and formation of an inclusive government in Kabul.
According to UN agencies, hunger now threatens 23 million Afghans, or 55 percent of the total population. The world body says it needs $4.4 billion from donor countries this year to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the country that the U.S. and its allies militarily occupied for 20 years.
“It would be a mistake to submit the people of Afghanistan to a collective punishment just because the de facto authorities are not behaving properly,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated on January 21 while addressing the grave humanitarian situation in the country.