ISLAMABAD: The Taliban want to explain their position on the Afghan peace process to countries around the world in “face-to-face meetings,” the group’s political spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told Arab News on Sunday, as a Taliban delegation wrapped up a four-day visit to Moscow.
The Taliban sent a three-member delegation to Russia to discuss prospects for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan following the collapse of talks with the United States this month. The delegation met with Russian officials, including President Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov.
“This is our policy, to brief and explain our position to countries in face-to-face meetings, which are astonished and concerned over the situation,” Shaheen said, but added that no visit had yet been planned.
This was the group’s first foreign trip since US President Donald Trump blocked the near-final Afghan peace deal on September 7 in a series of Twitter posts, citing a Taliban attack that had killed an American soldier and 11 other people.
The Taliban delegation to Moscow was headed by Taliban chief negotiator Sher Abbas Stanekzai, and included Suhail Shaheen and a senior member, Qari Din Muhammad.
“We explained our position to Russian officials and they supported our stance on the political negotiations,” Shaheen said in a series of audio messages.
“They agreed that there is no military solution to the Afghan problem and that the issue should be resolved through political means. They said the peace deal we have finalized with the American side is a strong foundation for peace,” he said.
Russia, which has hosted meetings between the Taliban and Afghan political and civil society representatives, said this week it hoped the process could be put back on track and urged both sides to resume talks.
On Sunday, a Russian news agency quoted its foreign ministry spokesman as saying Moscow had “stressed the necessity of the resumption of talks between the United States and the Taliban movement. Taliban, in turn, reiterated its readiness to continue dialogue with Washington.”
However, it is unclear whether the talks can be resumed.
President Trump tweeted once again on Sunday with reference to the Taliban and the end of the negotiation process.
“The Taliban has never been hit harder than it is being hit right now. Killing 12 people, including one great American soldier, was not a good idea. There are much better ways to set up a negotiation. The Taliban knows they made a big mistake, and they have no idea how to recover!” the US President said on Twitter.
But Shaheen played down Trump’s statements and said military pressure would not work. He added the sensible way was to convene at the negotiation table and sign off on the peace agreement.
“Implementation of the agreement will start after it is inked and we will be bound to implement it. The world will be a witness to check if we violate or they violate,” he said. “Neither they can blame us nor do we blame them (before signing).
“There is no cease-fire now. There is no obligation before the signing so how (can) the Americans blame us for violation of the agreement,” Shaheen said and added that Taliban policy was to “solve the Afghan problem peacefully” and not militarily.
As the Taliban delegation arrived in Moscow on Sept. 12, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing: “We are convinced that the complete end to foreign military presence is an inalienable condition of durable peace in Afghanistan.”
After Moscow, Taliban want “face-to-face” meetings in other countries
After Moscow, Taliban want “face-to-face” meetings in other countries
- Spokesman says Russia backs group’s stance on finding political solution for Afghan peace process
- Says until agreement with US is signed, there cannot be cease-fire violation
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
