Sawt Falasteen - Afghanistan problem 'can be solved': former women's affairs minister

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."

Despite promises not to return to the brutality displayed during their first stint in power in the 1990s, the Taliban authorities have imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, including the return of public floggings and executions.

Women and girls have been barred from education beyond the age of 12, from holding many jobs and from many public spaces in what the United Nations has described as "gender apartheid".

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.

"It can be solved."

- Light -

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.

"It has no meaning, so why continue that? Millions of people there are suffering."

With a little bit of international will, she insisted that pressure could be exerted on the Taliban authorities and those propping them up to ensure they participate.

The international community, she insisted, has a responsibility to bring an end to the deep suffering in Afghanistan.

"The world should not just keep watching it," she said.

Jalal recalled her elation in 2001 "when the international community came in and set the democratic agenda".

"The light came into the country."

- 'Will not be erased' -

Jalal, who at that time was a UN aid worker, after the Taliban had chased her from her post as a professor at Kabul University, stood in the country's first presidential polls in 2004.

She was surprised when she lost to Hamid Karzai, garnering just 1.1 percent of the votes.

"I thought I was going to be the winner," she said, pointing out that her opponents were all linked to armed groups, while she claims she had become very popular after travelling all over the country, handing out aid.

While that loss was disappointing, Jalal rejected the idea that Afghans were not ready to see women in power.

She called for the swift restoration of democracy, insisting that "of course, women should be given equal rights".

And since "they suffered more than others... they should get extra... We need to bring more and more women into the process and into leadership in the country".

During her speech to this week's rights summit, Jalal lamented her own "forced exile".

"But exile does not mean surrender," she said.

"I will continue to fight for democracy, for justice, for the dignity of every Afghan woman, because we will not be erased."

W.Mansour--SF-PST