US to increase pressure on Taliban

If the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan does not reverse any of its recent decisions restricting the rights of women and children on its own, the US will take steps to put pressure on it.

“We’ve addressed it directly with the Taliban,” State Department spokeswoman Ned Price said during a press conference on Monday. “We have a lot of tools that, if we believe they will not be overturned or undone, we are willing to move forward with.”

He did not elaborate on the prospective approaches or explain how the organisation, which has previously established rules that have stifled 20 years of progress for girls’ and women’s rights, would alter its mind.

The Taliban ordered women to cover their faces in public on Saturday, resuming a defining policy of their previous reign and escalating restrictions that have sparked outrage at home and abroad.

The ideal facial covering, according to the committee, was the all-encompassing blue burqa, alluding to the garment that was required for women in public under the Taliban’s prior 1996-2001 regime.

The international world has made girls’ education a major prerequisite for any future recognition of the Taliban government, which assumed control of the country in August after Western forces departed.

Despite this, the Taliban has prohibited girls and women from working and from travelling unless they are accompanied by a close male relative. Most girls were also forbidden from attending school after the sixth grade.

“We’ve had extensive consultations with our friends and partners,” Price added. “We will continue to take actions to build pressure on the Taliban to reverse some of these choices and fulfil the pledges that they have made.”

The $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US territory, half of which the Biden administration is aiming to give up to benefit the Afghan people, is a crucial piece of leverage possessed by Washington over the organisation.

Since the organisation seized command, the United States and other nations have withdrawn development funds and sanctioned the financial sector, forcing Afghanistan into economic devastation.

In a flurry of tweets on Saturday, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West voiced “grave worry” at the decision, while US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called it “unconscionable.”

Most Afghan women wear headscarves for religious reasons, while many in metropolitan areas such as Kabul do not.

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