Afghan women were blocked from attending the high-level meetings between the Taliban and United Nations leaders and special envoys dealing with Afghanistan in Qatar on Sunday. The Taliban had earlier demanded the exclusion of its country’s women as a condition for its attendance. 

“The diplomatic community’s constant caving to terrorist demands only reinforces the Taliban view. Women and girls in Afghanistan are living in an open-air prison and are treated as less than human. Abduction, rape, torture, and murder are daily realities for women under the Taliban’s gender apartheid system,” Jason Howk, director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, told Fox News Digital.

The discussions at the meetings reportedly centered on private sector growth, financing and banking restrictions, and drug trafficking, according to The Associated Press. Taliban chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid will lead the delegation of Afghanistan’s de facto authorities. Following Sunday’s meetings with the Taliban, the special envoys were expected to meet with Afghani women and members of civil society.

TALIBAN PUBLICLY FLOGS 63 IN AFGHANISTAN, INCLUDING WOMEN, DRAWING UN CONDEMNATION

“The U.N. and any diplomats or nations that support excluding women from the Doha talks to accommodate the wishes of the Taliban and Haqqani terrorist network should be publicly shamed. The women from Afghanistan, who believe in human rights for all, must be in every meeting about the future of the country. The misogynistic terrorists should be kept out of any conference until they reverse their positions on human rights and terrorism,” Howk complained. 

U.N. spokesman Jose Luis Diaz assured Fox News Digital that “we – and I expect many of the special envoys – will raise human rights, and particularly the rights of women and girls, in all the discussions with the Taliban.” Diaz did not respond to questions about whether delegates will specifically address an exhaustive list of repressive Taliban orders like forced veiling, a ban on education for girls after the sixth grade, and limits placed on women’s ability to travel without a male chaperon.

U.S. participants were to include Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West and Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights, Rina Amiri, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who told reporters that West and Amiri “only committed to participate once they secured clarity regarding the substantive agenda and, more importantly, confirmed that there would be meaningful engagement at the conference with Afghan women and members of Afghan civil society.”

A Taliban spokesman addressed a press conference in Kabul on June 29, 2024. Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities met with international envoys on June 30 in Qatar for talks presented by the United Nations as a key step in an engagement process, but condemned by rights groups for sidelining Afghan women. (Photo by AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The Taliban steadfastly professed that they would not discuss women in Doha. During a Saturday press conference in Kabul, the Voice of America reported that Mujahid reiterated that “Our meetings, such as the one in Doha or with other countries, have nothing to do with the lives of our sisters, nor will we allow them to interfere in our internal affairs.” While Mujahid said that he acknowledges that “women are facing issues,” he noted that “they are internal Afghan matters and need to be addressed locally within the framework of Islamic Sharia.”   

In an interview posted to X, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Roza Otunbayeva gave an indication about how women’s issues might be raised. “The issue of private industry and banking and…counternarcotics policy, they are both about the women,” Otunbayeva told reporters. 

UNAMA did not respond to questions for Otunbayeva about her remarks, and the scope of discussions with the Taliban about women’s rights.

Afghan women chant and hold signs of protest during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 26, 2022. (AP)

Since Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada instituted sharia law countrywide in November 2022, Afghan women have been subject to physical attacks in public for supposed lawbreaking. On June 4, 14 women in Sar-e Pul province were publicly flogged for crimes including immoral relations, theft and sodomy. 

Some of the worst attacks on women have taken place in private. In its 2023 Human Rights Report, the State Department wrote of allegations that women were being raped in Taliban prisons. Some were reportedly forced to undergo abortions after becoming pregnant while in custody. Others were said to have been executed after they “fell seriously ill as a consequence of repeated sexual assaults by Taliban members.” 

The head of the Taliban’s Doha political office, Suhail Shaheen, told Fox News Digital that Western media reports about women’s issues “don’t reflect the ground realities in Afghanistan,” explaining that “girls have access to education in medical institutions and other Darul Uloom institutes throughout the country.” Shaheen did not respond to follow-up questions about how many girls receive such education or how girls are expected to qualify for higher education in the future if their schooling ceases after sixth grade. 

Shaheen also stated that reports of rape in prisons are “a mere claim and accusation. Those behind such accusations want to pave the way for [Afghan women’s] asylum in the West. I hope those at the helm of affairs in the West are no more misled by some biased media outlets.” 

REPUBLICANS FUME OVER REPORT PART OF $2.8B AFGHAN HUMANITARIAN FUNDING WENT TO TALIBAN

A member of Taliban forces fires in the air to disperse Afghan women during a rally to protest against what the protesters say is Taliban restrictions on women in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 28, 2021. (Reuters/Ali Khara)

Journalist Lynne O’Donnell, a former Kabul bureau chief for the AP and Agence France-Presse, wrote for the Spectator about investigations into Taliban members raping imprisoned Afghan women. She told Fox News Digital that she “wrote about a story that contained credible allegations that are being investigated by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, and have been mentioned by the State Department…so just to say that I’ve made it up, and it’s a reflection of Western propaganda, it’s just further Taliban spin. It’s meaningless.”

In 2022, O’Donnell was detained and investigated by the Taliban while traveling in Afghanistan to report on changes in the country since the Taliban’s takeover. The Taliban forced O’Donnell to publicly retract her prior reporting about Taliban crimes, including allegations the Taliban had forced women into marriages, before she was permitted to leave the country. 

O’Donnell also claimed that “The U.N., the U.S., the EU, the U.K., the international community writ large is colluding with the Taliban, as they have all along. Their pushback against my reporting is proof that they would prefer to collude with a group of terrorists who are killers, drug dealers, widow makers, child murderers, liars, and misogynists.”

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, told Fox News Digital that U.N. personnel in Doha should not underestimate their negotiating partners. “Taliban leadership outclassed the U.S. in negotiations, organized the ouster of the U.S. from Afghanistan, and seized control of the country even before the U.S. could leave.” Roggio counts these as signs that the group is “organized, unified, and sophisticated.” 

AL QAEDA CHIEF INVITES FOREIGN FIGHTERS TO TRAIN IN AFGHANISTAN, TARGET WEST: ‘SAFE HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS’

Taliban fighters hold their weapons as they celebrate one year since they seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, in front of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, Aug. 15. (AP/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Otunbayeva told reporters that the Taliban “came from battles, from the mountains,” and that “to immediately turn them to the people who would sit [and] accept [is] not easy.” In her meetings with de-facto ministers, Otunbayeva said that some Taliban members claim to support educational access for girls and say the ban has been made by higher-ups. 

Roggio said Otunbayeva “has fallen into the same trap as many apologists for the Taliban: she is regurgitating Taliban talking points given behind closed doors that give the appearance of a moderate Taliban willing to give rights to women. The Taliban remains united on the issue of oppressing women, and I challenge her to name an influential leader that disagrees.” 

The Taliban were not invited to the first Doha summit in May 2023. They refused to take part in a second conference in February after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said they delivered conditions that “denied us the right to talk to other representatives of Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, to a large extent, be similar to recognition.” 

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the secretary-general, told reporters last week that “in no way should any of the meetings between U.N. officials and the envoys be seen as an official recognition of the Taliban as the government or legitimization.” 

For the second time in under a month, the ruling centrist coalition of French President Emmanuel Macron was dealt a heavy blow on Sunday by the far-right National Rally (RN) which secured the top position in the first round of the country’s snap legislative elections. 

Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called the snap election on 9 June after RN swept to victory in the European elections, obtaining more than double the number of votes Macron’s centrist coalition did.

Macron’s decision to call the election was described by commentators as either a ploy that could grant him the absolute majority he lost two years ago or a dangerous gamble that could see the far-right helm a government for the first time in the country.

Which is it? Euronews brings you the main takeaways from the first round.

Far-right makes historic gains

The National Rally (RN), led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, appears to have cemented its position as the country’s main political force by securing over 33% of the vote nationwide.

If the score is confirmed next Sunday in the second round, the party could secure between 230 and 280 seats – just nine seats short of an absolute majority. 

Bardella pledged on Sunday that he would be “the prime minister for all the people of France … respectful of the opposition, open to dialogue and concerned at all times with the unity of the people” all while taking swipes at Macron’s alliance and the left-wing New Popular Front. 

The second round, he added, will be “one of the most decisive (votes) in the history of the Fifth Republic”.

The far-right’s gains in the first round marked a historic performance for the party in a legislative election.

In 2017, the then-called National Front gained 13% of the vote in the first round and 2022, they received 18% of the vote.

Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, told Euronews that “what we see is that people are no longer ashamed to vote for the National Rally”.

“Not only are they no longer ashamed to do so, but they are no longer ashamed to say so,” she said.

While a scenario where the RN wins the absolute majority in parliament may not be the “most probable,” it cannot be “excluded,” she said.

Macron’s big loss

Three weeks after suffering a crushing defeat in the European elections, Macron’s centrist coalition, Ensemble, was dealt another devastating blow by coming in third with just 21% of the nationwide vote.

That’s 12 points and seven points below the far-right RN and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition, respectively. 

About 300 of its candidates are still in contention for a seat in the 577-seat hemicycle. But if its first-round score is confirmed next Sunday, it could mean the centrist coalition could shed as many as 180 seats and retain only between 70 and 100 MPs. 

Provided no other alliance gets an absolute majority, Macron could in theory try to form a ruling coalition but that might be a tall order.

The presidential camp has repeatedly rejected any notion of working with the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party with Macron himself saying that if the RN or LFI were to get into power, it could lead to “civil war”. 

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Parties that Macron could therefore try to rally for a more “moderate” coalition include the Socialists and the Greens on the left and the Republicans on the right.

But it’s unclear if they could find a landing zone or if they would jointly have the 289 seats needed.

Could there be a ‘Republican front’ against the RN?

Within minutes of the exit poll showing the far-right National Rally largely in the lead, political leaders on the left started calling for a so-called “Republican front”. 

They pledged to withdraw third-place candidates who qualified for the second round in an effort to prevent the RN from winning seats due to a split vote between the other parties.

This is true of LFI, the Socialists, Greens, and Communists, and also of certain members of Macron’s centrist coalition.

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“I say this with all the force that each and every one of our voters must muster. Not a single vote must go to the National Rally,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said in his speech on Sunday.

Other members of the president’s coalition have called on their voters not to support members of LFI, saying that neither the RN nor the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is part of the left-wing coalition, should get a vote.

For Mathias Bernard, a specialist in French political history and president of the University of Clermont Auvergne, “withdrawals or, conversely, triangular contests are the key to the election.”

“If each of the three blocs goes it alone in the second-round battle, the RN is likely to win an absolute majority. If there is a sort of ‘Republican front’, it will be more difficult for the RN,” he told Euronews.

“However, it is not certain that this “Republican front” will materialise,” he said, naming Ensemble and the Republicans as the two parties where third-placed candidates might most resist being asked to withdraw.

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High turnout in snap election

There was intense interest in the snap poll called by Macron, with several voters telling Euronews ahead of the vote that they were disappointed with the president’s policies and wanted change.

Turnout, which is often low in France, increased significantly during these elections.

In the first round of the 2017 and 2022 legislative elections, the participation rate did not reach 50%, according to interior ministry figures. The first round of this poll saw the participation rise to 66.7%.

“High turnout and fewer candidates led to an unprecedented number of three-way contests in the second round,” according to Célia Belin, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Paris office.

The presidential coalition’s refusal to systematically withdraw due to the presence of LFI candidates, however, could “increase anti-RN voters’ confusion about the best course of action,” she said.

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Manon Aubry, a leftist EU lawmaker, told reporters on Sunday that she met many first-time young voters when she went to vote in Paris.

This mobilisation, especially in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, should be welcomed and amplified, she said.

The results also sparked protests in the country, with thousands of left-wing voters gathering over the gains of the far-right.