KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban’s “internal debates and extreme decrees” are paralyzing humanitarian work in Afghanistan, the pinnacle of a significant aid agency told The Associated Press on Sunday, after he arrived on a week-long trip to check with Taliban leaders about reversing a ban on women working for national and international non-governmental groups.
Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, is the primary NGO chief to go to Afghanistan for talks with the Taliban because the ban got here into effect greater than two weeks ago.
Authorities have barred Afghan women from working at NGOs, allegedly because they weren’t wearing the Islamic headscarf appropriately. The ban follows a slew of moves which have severely limited or suspended women’s rights and education.
Aid groups, foreign governments, and the United Nations say women are vital for the delivery of lifesaving assistance in Afghanistan and are calling for the ban’s reversal. Many groups have suspended their operations, warning of dire and deadly consequences for a population already battered by a long time of war, deteriorating living conditions and economic hardship.
The Norwegian Refugee Council says it has worked in Afghanistan since 2003 and employs 470 women. It helped greater than 840,000 people last 12 months and was desiring to help 700,000 this 12 months, the group said.
Political Cartoons on World Leaders
Political Cartoons
Egeland said that he was meeting Taliban leaders within the capital of Kabul and within the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and the bottom of the group’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Egeland has already met the economy minister, who initially announced the ban, and other Taliban officials. Egeland indicated that those in Kabul were more willing to contemplate women returning to work due to their crucial role in delivering humanitarian aid.
“All of them say that they need us to proceed work and hope we are going to proceed without females,” Egeland said in an interview Sunday at his group’s Kabul office. “But after I say we’re not willing or in a position to work with males only, they (Taliban officials) realize that the population is completely depending on international assistance in the intervening time, food, shelter, sanitation.”
Women are needed to contact women, including female-headed households and widows, he said. Aid agencies say it’s not possible for men to do that work due to Afghanistan’s social and cultural norms in addition to the Taliban’s own prohibitions against the blending of genders.
Individually, two aid officials have told the AP that they got the impression by Taliban ministers in Kabul that they need women to resume their work at NGOs but that this decision lies with the leadership in Kandahar.
Egeland said the economy minister “sent us the message given by the supreme leader that we needed to discontinue all work.” He said he’s traveling to Kandahar because “it’s there that the ideological and non secular decrees come from.”
“The (Taliban’s) internal debates and extreme decrees have paralyzed our work,” Egeland said.
The NRC chief said it was not possible to satisfy the supreme leader in Kandahar but hoped to influence those around him.
Two weeks after the ban, it stays unclear how comprehensive it’s, and a few groups have reported that they can proceed their work.
Egeland said this raises further questions.
“Can this be a religiously activated ban if some (women) are working and a few will not be? It’s not thought through in any respect,” Egeland said. “We will’t work with males only because we will’t follow their (the Taliban’s) rules and regulations.”
The Norwegian aid chief said the group’s female staff have complied with the Taliban’s dress codes, gender segregation rules and even the necessity to have a male chaperone on certain occasions. The damage attributable to the ban will grow to be worse the longer it continues, he warned, saying malnutrition and death is rising and maternal health is plunging.
On his trip, Egeland can be because of meet officials from embassies of Muslim-majority countries, similar to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who retain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and have condemned the Taliban crackdowns on female education and employment.
Despite initially promising a more moderate rule, the Taliban have widely implemented their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
They’ve banned women and girls from middle school, highschool, and university, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gymnasiums.
Egeland said he was in Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
“All these guarantees were made. We were misled. What I’d say is that the Taliban decrees on female employees, on education for women is so fallacious for Afghanistan, for the population, for the longer term, for the economy.”
He urged the West to send their diplomats back to Afghanistan to have interaction with the country’s recent rulers since the population were the “same 40 million residents they left behind.”
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material is probably not published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.