UN Human Rights Council Fails to Hold Taliban Accountable, Says Human Rights Watch

The organisation said that the policewomen of the former government are in hiding after they received threats from the Taliban.

The report, titled "Dual Betrayal: Past and Present Abuses of Afghan Policewomen," said that the former government's female officials were threatened by Taliban officials.

According to the report, the Taliban's threats have also increased the risks to these women from their families, who were opposed to their presence in the ranks of the police forces since the beginning.

Human Rights Watch said that the threats have also caused many former female police officers to live in hiding in Afghanistan for fear of being identified.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 24 women from the former government's police forces for this report. Ten of these women were interviewed in person, with nine people remotely in five provinces of Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch also heard the accounts of five women who are now in the United States, Sweden, Italy, Iran, and Pakistan.

According to the report, female police members of the former Afghan government receive threatening phone calls from the Taliban and are asked to go to the group's offices for interrogation.

The women have also received warnings of uncertain consequences for working with the former government's police forces.

Human Rights Watch has said that several female officials of the former government have been killed by relatives who believed that these women had “demeaned the reputation" of their families. According to the report, the Taliban did not conduct a credible investigation into the deaths of these women.

The interviewees also said that the Taliban violently raided their homes for searches, attacked the men of the family, and destroyed the property.

Human Rights Watch said in its report that female police officers were also subjected to "sexual harassment and rape" by their male colleagues during their tenure in the previous government.

The report added that the previous government officials were never held accountable for their actions towards female police officers.

According to the report, a number of female police officers of the former government said that they were repeatedly subjected to "sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence" during their work.

They also said that they were pressured by superiors to "have sex in exchange for promotion or to avoid being fired".

Human Rights Watch said that since at least 2013, cases of abuse of female police officers under the previous government have been known among countries that support these forces.

In its report, Human Rights Watch wrote that many female members of the former government have fled to neighbouring countries such as Iran or Pakistan or are trying to obtain asylum in some other countries.

The women said that they were suffering from the long-term psychological effects of abuse they had experienced in the past but had not been able to receive adequate psychological support.

The report said that the female police officials of the former Afghan government were "betrayed" in two ways: first, by the previous Afghan government, which allowed serious sexual abuses against them to continue unaddressed, and second, by countries that ignored these abuses and also denied asylum or resettlement to female police officers.

Countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as the European Union, which supported the training and employment of these women, must now prioritise their asylum and resettlement applications, Human Rights Watch said.

Meanwhile, sources told Afghanistan International that Western countries have rejected the asylum applications of many female police officials of the former government because they are "military". These women are currently living in a state of uncertainty in third countries such as Pakistan.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Taliban to stop harassing female police officers of the former Afghan government and launch credible investigations into the matter.

The former government's female police officials lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover and are now facing economic challenges to find alternative income, the organisation said.

According to the report, the Taliban government has called a small number of these women to work to inspect women at the group's checkpoints as well as guard female prisoners.

"The governments that funded the training and employment of women in the Afghan police force should also put pressure on the Taliban to end all abuses against women and girls," said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Bošković met Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban's Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, in Kabul on Wednesday.

The Taliban's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation released uncensored footage of the meeting, but the Persian section of the Bakhtar news agency hid the images of the EU chargé d'affaires.

The Pashto section of BNA also published the news of this meeting, but with the difference that instead of a joint photo of Haqqani and Bošković, it only published a photo of the Taliban's Minister of Refugees.

The European Union recently nominated Bosković as its representative in Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, she spoke with the Taliban's Minister of Refugees about the deportation of Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan.

According to the Taliban's Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, women's faces and voices are prohibited in public places, and women must leave their homes with a mahram.

The Danish Migration Agency has said that Afghans with residence permits must have passports.

The Danish government's move means that Afghan citizens in the country will have to go to an office under the supervision of the Taliban to get a new passport.

It has been said that Afghans can only get a foreign passport if they prove that they cannot get a new one.

According to local media reports, if Afghans need to return to Afghanistan to get a new passport, the Migration Agency agrees.

In August this year, the Taliban's Foreign Ministry called on Afghans and citizens living in Europe who want to receive consular services to refer to the group's missions in Europe. The ministry mentioned its aligned missions in Spain, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Munich, Germany.

The Taliban has already implemented religious rulings in Ghazni, Laghman, Farah and Jawzjan stadiums.

After the implementing the rulings in the stadiums of several other provinces by the Taliban, the Kandahar Stadium, which was renovated with the support of FIFA and sports institutions and made available to Kandahar athletes, witnessed the punishment of the individuals on Wednesday.

The Kandahar Department of Culture and Information announced this news while officials of the Physical Education Department and the Afghan Football Federation, which are in charge of Kandahar Stadium, have not yet commented on the matter.

The Taliban's implementation of Sharia rulings in the presence of a large number of spectators in Afghanistan's stadiums has also drawn criticism from international sports organisations.

According to the international laws of sport and the statutes of the World Football Federation (FIFA), the implementation of such programmes in football stadiums will result in the suspension of the football federations of the countries.

Matthew Miller said that normalisation of relations with the Taliban is contingent on fundamental changes in the Taliban's behaviour towards human rights.

During a press conference on Tuesday (October 8), in response to a question about Russia's actions to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist groups, the US State Department spokesperson said that the US decision has not changed.

Recently, Russia announced that it was "completing the review" of removing the Taliban from the list of terrorist groups.

"We have not changed our designation of the Taliban, which is designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organisation, and we continue to be clear that any significant step toward normalisation is contingent on a profound change in the Taliban's human rights behaviour," Miller said.

He added that the international community is unanimous about changing the Taliban's human rights behaviour.

Miller said at the meeting that the United States, in cooperation with its partners, is urging the Taliban to repeal discriminatory sentences.

Stressing on the need for girls to return to school and lifting restrictions against women in Afghanistan, he added, "Human rights, especially the rights of women and girls, who continue to be repressed by the Taliban, are a priority in our interactions with the Taliban."

"Washington Alert About Terrorist Threat Against United States From Afghan Soil"

Twenty-three years ago, the United States began its military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After 20 years, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power, and the United Nations has reported that al-Qaeda is regrouping and has reactivated in Afghanistan.

In response to a question about the extent to which the United States has achieved its goals in Afghanistan, the US State Department spokesperson said that Washington is alert about any terrorist threat against the United States from Afghan soil.

"Our top priority with Afghanistan is to ensure that it never again becomes a base for terrorist attacks against the United States," the State Department spokesperson said.

Regarding the change in the position of the US special envoy for Afghanistan affairs, he stressed that there has been no change in US policies and that all the duties of Tom West will continue by other officials and the United States will continue on its path with the same priorities.