Afghanistan problem ‘can be solved’: former women’s affairs minister

GENEVA: Afghanistan has been cloaked in “darkness” since the return of the Taliban government three and a half years ago, but the country´s former women´s affairs minister insists the problem “can be solved”.

When the Taliban swept back to power in August 2021, “everything was lost”, Massooda Jalal, a former minister and the first woman in Afghanistan´s history to run for president, told AFP in an interview this week.

“They brought back the darkness we had fought so hard to escape.” Jalal, a 61-year-old medical doctor who served as Afghanistan´s women´s affairs minister from 2004 to 2006, insisted that “there is a way to replace the darkness with the light”.

“It is challenging, but it is not impossible,” she told AFP in Geneva, where she and her daughter Husna were being awarded a women´s rights prize at the annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.

She called for an international conference, like the United Nations-backed talks held in Bonn, Germany in 2001. Those talks saw the signing of a landmark deal to create a post-Taliban leadership and usher in democracy after the militants were ousted by a US-led invasion following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“The political regime in Kabul is not supported by the people, and it is not recognised and supported by the world,” said Jalal, now an activist who lives in the Netherlands.