Shahabuddin Delawar, head of the Taliban administration\u2019s commission for contact with Afghan figures, has said the administration has no plan to hold talks with political opponents and does not consider them a \u201cparty to the Afghanistan issue,\u201d a stance that effectively closes the door to any domestic political dialogue.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Shamshad TV in Kabul, he said negotiating with opponents would amount to giving them \u201cpolitical legitimacy,\u201d something the Taliban administration does not accept. Delawar added: \u201cThey have had their test, and we do not consider them a party with which we should enter into political negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Taliban official described the number of opposition figures as \u201cvery small\u201d and claimed they do not have the political weight needed for talks.<\/p>\n
Delawar, who took part in the Doha talks with the United States, also said of the Doha agreement: \u201cThe word woman is not mentioned in it from beginning to end.\u201d He claimed that in the culture of \u201cPashtuns and Afghans,\u201d mentioning women in meetings is not customary and that, according to him, the issue of women\u2019s rights was therefore not raised in those talks.<\/p>\n
He also defended Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada\u2019s decree banning girls above the sixth grade from education, saying the restriction would remain in place \u201cuntil further notice,\u201d without giving any explanation for the decision.<\/p>\n
The remarks come as reports say Delawar previously stated at a Doha meeting that women had the right to study and work up to doctoral level and spoke of the Taliban administration\u2019s commitment to those rights. Over the past three years, he has also repeatedly expressed hope that restrictions on girls\u2019 education would be lifted.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, reports have also said these positions led to Delawar being removed from the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum and transferred to head the Taliban administration\u2019s Red Crescent, a move some have linked to his comments on girls\u2019 education.<\/p>\n
Under the Doha agreement signed in February 2020 between the Taliban administration and the United States, the start of intra-Afghan talks was envisaged. However, those discussions were never effectively launched in the following years, and Taliban officials now reject negotiations with internal opponents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Taliban official rejects talks with political opponents and says the ban on girls’ education above grade six will continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}