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No Afghan women allowed to attend UN-led meetings with Taliban: 'Caving to terrorist demands'
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
Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman for the Taliban government who leads the Taliban delegation, center right, speaks with Uzbekistan Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan Ismatullah Irgashev, during a meeting in Doha, Qatar, Sunday, June 30, 2024. A Taliban delegation is attending a United Nations-led meeting in Qatar on Afghanistan after organizers said women would be excluded from the gathering. (Taliban Spokesman Office via AP)
“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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth warned that more casualties are expected in the ongoing Operation Epic Fury in Iran, with seven U.S. soldiers having been killed so far in the fighting.
Hegseth made the comment during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday.
“The president’s been right to say there will be casualties,” Hegseth said. “Things like this don’t happen without casualties.”
“There will be more casualties,” he continued. “And no one is — I mean, especially our generation knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets, it’s — but that doesn’t weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.”
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U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks at the “Shield of the Americas” Summit in Miami, Florida, March 7, 2026. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Six U.S. service members were killed in a March 1 Iranian drone attack in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, while supporting Operation Epic Fury. The U.S. military said a seventh service member died of injuries from an Iranian attack on troops in Saudi Arabia on March 1.
The U.S. and Israel last week launched joint strikes against Iran. Iran has retaliated, launching strikes against Israel and neighboring Gulf Arab states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Residents look on and take pictures as flames and smoke rise from an oil storage facility struck as attacks hit the city during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 7, 2026. (Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA via AP)
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi on Sunday told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that if the U.S. deploys ground troops in Iran, “we have very brave soldiers who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil, to fight with them and to kill them and destroy them.”
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“We never give up, we never surrender, and we continue to resist as long as it takes,” he said. “We continue to defend ourselves, and we are defending our territory, our people and our dignity. And our dignity is not for sale.”
When reporters asked President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on Saturday about potential ground troops being used in the Iran operation, the president said there would “have to be a very good reason.”
From left, President Donald Trump, White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, center, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth listen to a reporter’s question while traveling aboard Air Force One en route from Dover Air Force Base, Del., to Miami, Saturday, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
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“And I would say if we ever did that, [Iran] would be so decimated they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level,” Trump told reporters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Kyiv could provide defensive systems as well as assistance to civilians and American soldiers “deployed in certain countries” in the Middle East as the war in Iran continues.
He has reportedly proposed an exchange of Ukrainian defensive technology to combat Iranian drones in return for advanced US defensive systems to use in the war against Russia.
The US-Israel-Iran conflict, which started 10 days ago when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran and killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has continued to escalate. Iran has responded with strikes on Israel and US military assets and other infrastructure in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
As Gulf and other Middle Eastern states continue to attempt to intercept incoming drones and missiles with US-supplied air defences, the US has asked Ukraine to contribute some of its own air-defence systems.
Here is what we know.
What has the US requested from Ukraine and why?
The US has asked for Ukraine’s help in defending Washington’s allies in the Middle East against Iranian missile attacks on infrastructure and US military assets, Ukraine’s president confirmed last week.
At the moment, the US is using air defence systems such as the Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, to intercept Iranian drones and missiles targeting its military assets in the region. The Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) and PAC-3 are advanced surface-to-air missile defence systems.
However, these types of systems are extremely expensive, costing millions of dollars for each interceptor missile fired, and there are concerns that supplies of US interceptor missiles could run low.
“We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against ‘shaheds’ in the Middle East region,” Zelenskyy wrote in an X post on March 5.
Shahed drones, particularly the Shahed-136, are Iranian-designed “kamikaze” or loitering munitions which are very low cost compared to the interceptors being used by the US. Costing roughly $20,000-$35,000 each, these GPS-guided drones are about 3.5m (11.5 feet) long and fly autonomously to pre-programmed coordinates to strike fixed targets with explosive payloads. They blow up as they hit their targets.
Over the course of the Iran war, Shahed-136 drones have targeted Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE where US military assets and troops are hosted. Experts estimate that Iran has thousands of these drones.
Iran has also been supplying Moscow with many thousands of Shahed drones during Russia’s war on Ukraine.
During the course of Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine, Ukraine’s domestic arms industry has been forced to innovate, building low-cost interceptor drones priced at roughly $1,000 to $2,000 to counter Russian attacks with imported Iranian Shahed-136s.
Kyiv is now mass-producing these low-cost interceptor drones.
“The role of Shahed-type drones in long-range attacks has become more prominent in Ukraine after Russia took Iranian technology, improved it, and built it in previously unimaginable numbers,” Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert for the UK-based think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
What has Zelenskyy said?
Zelenskyy has posted several statements on social media confirming that he is ready to help Middle Eastern countries defend their territories by providing technical expertise.
“Ukrainians have been fighting against ‘shahed’ drones for years now, and everyone recognises that no other country in the world has this kind of experience. We are ready to help,” he wrote on X on March 5.
“I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security.
“Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people.”
It is understood that Ukraine is in talks with several Middle Eastern countries about this.
On Monday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has deployed interceptor drones and a team of specialists to help protect US military bases in Jordan.
Zelenskyy wrote on X that he has also spoken directly to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) about “countering threats from the Iranian regime”.
He also said he had spoken with the leaders of Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly stressed that Ukraine must not weaken its own air defences. However, it is mass-producing this equipment now, and may well be able to afford to share.
“The fact that there are surplus capabilities ready to be sent to the US and the Middle East is unsurprising because Ukraine has led this innovation,” Giles said.
Zelenskyy has therefore proposed an exchange of air defence systems with the US ones being used in the Middle East.
“We ourselves are at war. And I said, completely frankly, that we have a shortage of what they have. They have missiles for the Patriots, but hundreds or thousands of ‘shaheds’ cannot be intercepted with Patriot missiles – it is too costly,” Zelenskyy said.
“Meanwhile, we have a shortage of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles. So, when it comes to technology or weapons exchange, I believe our country will be open to it.”
Zelenskyy may also have good political reasons for extending help, analysts say.
“The US has declined support for Ukraine on the ground that it had insufficient supply of air defence munitions, and now more of those Patriots have been fired in the Middle East in a few days, than have been supplied to Ukraine in four years,” Giles said.
“Zelenskyy will be aware that in providing this assistance, he is not only shaming the US, but also directly supporting potential friends and partners in the Middle East, who before now have been ambivalent to the situation in Ukraine,” Giles said.
Who else has sent defensive backup to the Gulf?
European countries including the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy have pledged to provide defensive backup to Gulf nations over the past week. Additionally, Australia said it was deploying military assets to the region.
Wary of becoming directly involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran, European countries have nevertheless been drawn into the conflict by attacks on a British base on Cyprus in the Mediterranean and Iranian strikes on Western allies in Gulf countries that host US troops in military bases.
What will happen next?
Just as Ukraine is getting involved in the war, Russia might too, say experts.
“We should not be surprised if before long, as well as Russian technology in Iranian drones, we see Iran launching Shaheds manufactured in Russia,” Giles said.
He described Russia as a “primary beneficiary of current US actions,” pointing to how the surge in oil prices, the relaxation in US curbs on Russian energy exports to keep crude and gas prices under control, and the diversion of air defence munitions from Europe to the Middle East all helped Moscow. These, he said, “are all lifelines for Russia”.
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