I’ve written before about why we shouldn’t negotiate with any Taliban member who ranks higher than “low- and mid-level fighters.” I think it’s a fool’s errand to believe that the Taliban’s leadership would negotiate in good faith, especially when the likes of Taliban chief Mullah Omar starts sounding like he’d rather spend his time in Haight-Ashbury in 1968.
However, the idea has gained more-than-superficial traction with some highly respected individuals — Vice President Biden, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, to name a few. Of course, details like with whom we would negotiate and under what circumstances remain relatively opaque, but the fact that the Pakistanis are now vacuuming up the Taliban’s higher-ups suggests that the idea is a serious one and Islamabad wants to control the bargaining chips.
But today, the Washington Post reports yet another reason not bark too far up the Taliban’s tree — women’s issues:
The Taliban’s repressive treatment of women helped galvanize international opposition in the 1990s, and by some measures democracy has revolutionized Afghan women’s lives. Their worry now is … that male leaders, behind closed doors and desperate for peace, might not force Taliban leaders to accept, however grudgingly, that women’s roles have changed.
[…]
“We don’t want them to stop us from getting an education or working in an office,” said Jan, 18, wearing a rhinestone-studded head scarf at her rebuilt school. Women, she said, should be “the first priority.”
Karzai, the Afghan president, has endorsed the idea of talking with all levels of the Taliban, and his aides insist that women need not worry about the equal rights the Afghan constitution guarantees them. But they also say they are performing a difficult balancing act, and suggest that making bold statements about the sanctity of such topics as women’s rights might kill talks before they start.
Is there any question about women’s fate in an Afghanistan that includes Taliban governing officials? There shouldn’t be — even if the Taliban holds a minority of, say, ministries or seats in parliament, it’s obvious that women’s development in all walks of Afghan life would be serverly hampered.
