Diplomats are preparing for the third round of Doha Talks on Afghanistan right now, and as of the June 16, the Taliban and Haqqani terrorist regime has announced they will attend the event.
Since August 2021, when the Taliban and Haqqani fighters entered the capital of Afghanistan and instituted violent rule by terror, the diplomatic world has struggled to find a strategy that might reverse the injustices of their illegal regime.
Envoys have visited the regime in Kabul, nations have allowed the terrorists to attend conferences, business leaders have set up lucrative deals to enrich the regime and themselves, and some nations have even allowed and recognized Taliban regime members as legitimate diplomats in their countries.
None of this activity has had any of the desired effects. The world wants the terror regime to denounce and fight terrorists, to create an inclusive and legitimate government, and to reverse their draconian human rights violations.
While the diplomats flap around, the Taliban and Haqqani leaders continue to carry out their vision for the country. That includes gender apartheid that excludes women and girls from daily life, and treats them as inferior to men and boys. That includes violence against any Afghan that dares to speak freely or politically oppose them, meaning they censor all media and outlaw any organization that disagrees with them. They murder any person that causes them serious trouble and dole out barbaric punishments for lesser offenses. They create terrorist brainwashing centers across the country and tell the humanitarian donors they are schools. They steal humanitarian funding in a variety of ways, and direct any that remains to be spent only on their supporters. They hunt down and kill former Republic employees and security services members and human rights activists.
Diplomats have a chance to change this path this summer. They must change this path. The current strategy is setting up full recognition of the Taliban and Haqqani regime as a legal government. Just last week the UN lifted travel sanctions on a wanted terrorist so he could visit senior UAE leaders and attend the Hajj as a celebrated hero who had defeated NATO and destroyed the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
What is the next relief of sanctions or travel ban going to bring?
The people, especially the women, of Afghanistan feel the world has abandoned them to live as prisoners under homicidal terrorists, and more disturbingly that the West has abandoned their positions on human rights. To give Afghans hope and to also reassert strong support for human rights for all peoples, the diplomatic community must make a sharp turn from the current path.
First, the diplomats running the upcoming Doha meeting should meet the Taliban and Haqqani representatives at the doors of the event with a full array of press members with cameras rolling. Next, they should present the terrorists with a set of demands that the Taliban envoys must publicly agree to before they can even enter the event. Demand that they renounce all terrorist groups and turn over the wanted terrorists among them to Interpol so they can be tried in whatever nation has a bounty on them. Demand they renounce all restrictions on women and girls in the Afghanistan, and immediately reopen schools for girls and women effective immediately. Finally make them announce they will enter into full and public talks with all their political opponents and then allow a fair and fully monitored election in the next three months so the people of Afghanistan can choose the leaders they wish to build a new government.
If the Taliban and Haqqani envoys will not announce these concessions, then publicly turn them away from the Doha talks and tell the world that the terrorist regime is not a serious diplomatic partner. These thugs have had nearly three years to make these key decisions about the future of the country. If they choose to remain a terrorist safe-haven, enforce a gender apartheid system, and to ignore the will of the people to create their own government and choose their own leaders—they are not going to ever give an inch on the demands of the citizens of Afghanistan and the demands of the world needed to become a recognized government.
This failure of the terror regime to make the right choice on these important issues should close the door on the large global effort to negotiate towards legitimacy and recognition as any type of legal government.
With this door closed, the global community who cares about the welfare of citizens in Afghanistan can start down a new path. This path should start by closing the Taliban offices in Doha. Expel all of their members from Qatar and any other nation that has allowed their illegitimate envoys.
Next set up a series of conferences in various nations outside Qatar to meet with an inclusive body of refugees that were not deeply tied to the previous Republic or the Taliban terror network. Help them to organize into a governing council in exile that can lay the groundwork for the nation that will arise when the Taliban regime falls again. This should also signal the end of the disastrous intervention of Qatar and Pakistan into Afghanistan affairs.
Over time, as Afghans around the world and inside the country hold discussions and conduct referendums (with a variety of digital democracy tools) they will coalesce around the basic ideals they want for their country. This will allow the world to see if the people of Afghanistan want the violent dictatorship offered by the Taliban and their terror partners, or if they want a more just and free society where they can all control their destinies. If the choice is a more free society with full human rights for all people then the world must help the people of Afghanistan to achieve it.
That does not mean sending armies or aircraft into the country to do what Afghans have not done yet. That means supporting whatever method the people of Afghanistan choose to use to remove the terrorists and misogynists from power. We should not rule out supporting martial, diplomatic, or informational activities that will disempower the terror regime. Let them choose their path, and if it is moral, and in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan, then help them.
With heavier sanctions on the Taliban and Haqqani regime, their families, and especially their supporters in Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and the Gulf, the terrorists will lose power. Their main goal is to stay in power and gain international recognition as the official government of Afghanistan. Every action that the international community takes from today forward must be to block that goal. Sanction them for their gender apartheid system. Sanction and punish, and hunt them for terrorist activities and allowing terrorists from around the globe to flock to their safe-haven and to flourish again.
If we choose not to change the diplomatic strategy now, then the terror regime will reach their main goal as they have always done—by waiting out the rest of the world and crushing the innocent civilians in Afghanistan under their rifle buttstocks.
