JakartaPost-Mar 30
Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Qatar’s Deputy Foreign Minister Lolwah Al-Khater put international demands that Afghan girls be allowed back in school to a top member of the Taliban government, officials have said. The two women ministers together on Monday held talks with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Doha amid mounting concern over rights in the country, especially for women. Foreign governments warned that the Taliban’s actions could cause a backlash at a fund-raising conference for Afghanistan on Thursday, as aid agencies warn of a growing food and health crisis in the country of 37 million people. Retno and Al-Khater were the first foreign representatives to meet a Taliban leader since the fundamentalist group sent girls home last Wednesday, a few hours after letting them back into secondary schools. The girls’ education ban has been widely condemned after the Taliban, who retook Kabul in August, gave commitments that girls would be allowed to study. And there are now fears that the action could damage a UN appeal to raise $4.4 billion to cover Afghanistan’s food and health needs this year. Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the face by a Pakistani Taliban as a 14-year-old, said the hardline group was “misusing the name of Islam” by stopping girls studying. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/03/30/indonesian-qatari-foreign-ministers-urge-taliban-to-let-girls-return-to-school.html.
