Michael McCaul, Chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, criticised the country’s special envoy for women and human rights in Afghanistan for meeting Taliban members in Doha.
McCaul said, “There are more repressive edicts against Afghan women and girls today than there were when Amiri took office.”
The Chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs stressed that the US representatives’ engagement with the Taliban doesn’t help Afghan women.
Following the meeting with the Taliban's foreign minister in Doha, Amiri said that she met with the group's representatives due to "Afghans and human rights defenders insisting on direct engagement with the Taliban”.
The US-Taliban meeting in Doha has been met with wide-ranging criticisms. Several Afghans who have been part of the protest movement of Afghan women have said that Amiri as a US government envoy should not justify her meetings with the Taliban for human rights or women’s rights issues.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs stressed that US engagement with the Taliban is like legitimising the group and said that Afghans didn’t ask for more US engagement with the group.
He said that “these meetings should stop”.
Some Afghan politicians and activists have said that the US sees its own interests in engaging with the Taliban and that Rina Amiri, an envoy of the US Department, acts based on Washington's policy and interests.
Former Afghan parliamentarian, Fawzia Kofi, on Wednesday, said that foreign diplomats cannot be blamed for "protecting the interests of their governments". She asked the anti-Taliban fronts to “mobilise around” their own narratives.
