By Humaira
I’ve been on the sidelines watching the United States strong-arm Afghans into a ‘peace’ that is convenient for America’s foreign policy but potentially detrimental to the future of Afghanistan. The negotiations between the US and Taliban has not only excluded the government of Afghanistan but it has also undermined the biggest group of victims of the Taliban regime, Afghan women.
So far, attempts by the Afghan government and Afghan female leaders to better understand what plans are being made by the American envoy and Taliban has been thwarted by American diplomats.
As an attempt to get Afghan women’s voices amplified throughout the world, Farahnaz Forotan, an Afghan journalist and activist, started the #MyRedLine campaign and thousands of Afghan women have used social media to urge US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad not to negotiate their rights out of existence. Prominent male and female Afghan government official, including President Ashraf Ghani, have shown their support by tweeting their “MyRedLine messages.
In a Foreign Policy interview, Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan’s first female Ambassador to the United States reminds her counterparts in Washington DC that Afghan women’s rights are not a bargaining chip.
“The Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of 2001. It has changed, it has shifted, and there is a huge difference. The people of Afghanistan have their own voice. The women have been treated like a minority, but they are not a minority. Together, the women and the youth are actually a majority, and they are not willing to give up their rights. They are not willing to compromise their human rights and go back to the old days.”