Negotiations had already taken place several times in recent weeks, in Doha, Qatar. But on European soil it is unprecedented. The Taliban delegation is made up of a dozen people, who even took in photo, all smiles, on the tarmac from Kabul airport last weekend, before boarding a private flight to Oslo.
It is a weighty delegation: it includes in its ranks the new Minister of Foreign Affairs and one of the strong men of the regime, Amir Khan Muttaqi, Anas Haqqani, one of the leaders of the Haqqani family network, based on the border Pakistani-Afghan and closely linked to Al Qaeda groups. American diplomats, French, British, Germans, Italians and Norwegians are seated across the table. And everything has been taking place since this morning out of sight, behind closed doors, in a luxury hotel near Oslo, the Soria Moria.
This bare-faced negotiation has sparked wide controversy in Norway. Afghan opponents and women’s rights activists demonstrated outside the hotel. And they were able to meet the negotiators of the Taliban regime. One of the major sources of controversy is the presence of Anas Haqqani: he is considered to be the instigator of numerous attacks and a complaint for “war crimes” has been filed against him in Norway.
If the Taliban come to negotiate, it is because the country is doing very badly: Afghanistan is bankrupt. Because the new masters of the country are economically incompetent, because a large part of the elites fled when Kabul fell. And because the financial reserves of Afghanistan have been frozen: nearly ten billion assets blocked. Half of the country’s budget depended on international aid, almost all of which had been stopped. Consequence: the salaries of civil servants and teachers have not been paid for months. Unemployment is skyrocketing. And above all, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.
According to a UN report published in early January, hunger threatens 23 million Afghans, that’s more than half of the country’s population. Unicef adds that almost a million children could die during the winter. The United Nations estimates the needs at nearly five billion dollars, the largest budget ever devised for a specific country. The Taliban therefore hope to get help: food delivery, emergency housing, logistics for health services or for access to water.
The whole question is to know what they are ready to give in exchange. What Westerners demand is respect for fundamental rights. Rights for opponents: there is talk of an amnesty. Rights for ethnic minorities: riots have broken out in recent days in regions with a Uzbek majority (the Taliban are essentially Pashtuns).
And especially the rights of women: the Taliban may make promises in this direction, the actions do not come. Secondary schools for girls have been closed, women have almost disappeared from public employment. And the Taliban delegation in Oslo is of course only made up of men.