RASC News Agency: A wave of public outrage swept across Afghanistan this week as members of the country’s embattled civil society and press corps mobilized to denounce what they describe as a deeply misguided and morally reprehensible proposal by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The proposal reportedly involves considering the handover of Afghanistan’s United Nations seat to the Taliban an armed fundamentalist group widely accused of war crimes, institutional misogyny, and systematic human rights abuses. On Tuesday, demonstrators assembled in the heart of Kabul to voice their fierce opposition to what they perceive as a betrayal by the international community. In videos submitted to RASC News Agency, protestors can be seen holding banners and chanting in defiance, warning that if UNAMA proceeds with this plan, it will be “complicit in the Taliban’s crimes against humanity.”
The demonstration was not a mere symbolic gesture it was a desperate plea for justice from a society whose institutions have been crushed and whose citizens, particularly women and minorities, are living under a regime that rules through intimidation, violence, and religious extremism. Protesters accused the United Nations of considering recognition for a group that not only lacks democratic legitimacy but also enforces theocratic totalitarianism with the barrel of a gun. Speakers at the protest emphasized that the Taliban, far from being a governing authority, is a militant insurgency that seized power through brute force and now governs through systematic repression. “This regime does not represent the people of Afghanistan,” one civil activist shouted. “It represents a violent ideology that seeks to erase our identity, our women, and our future.”
Women in particular have borne the brunt of Taliban rule. Protesters decried the international community’s silence in the face of what they described as “gender apartheid” a regime that has outlawed female education beyond the sixth grade, banned women from working in most sectors, and subjected them to public floggings for so-called moral infractions. To grant the Taliban a voice at the United Nations, they argued, would be tantamount to endorsing these horrors. “This is not diplomacy. It is betrayal,” said a female journalist attending the rally. “Recognizing the Taliban means silencing every girl locked out of a classroom, every woman lashed in public, every activist imprisoned or disappeared. It is to legitimize oppression and wash the blood off the hands of tyrants.”
The crowd accused UNAMA of abandoning its mandate to protect human rights and uphold the dignity of all Afghanistanis. “The Taliban have no legitimacy legal, moral, or electoral,” another speaker proclaimed. “They have no constitution, no rule of law, no respect for international norms. Granting them a seat at the United Nations is a grotesque distortion of what that institution is meant to stand for.” The demonstration reflects growing disillusionment among Afghanistan’s educated and progressive communities, who feel betrayed not only by their own usurped government but also by international actors now flirting with a regime they view as a criminal syndicate masquerading as a government.
As the protest came to a close, one young woman cried out, “We are not the Taliban’s hostages we are the people of Afghanistan. And we will not be erased.” The United Nations has yet to issue an official statement regarding the proposal. But the message from Kabul is resoundingly clear: recognizing the Taliban is not a step toward peace it is a step toward legitimizing tyranny.
