Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, a young Afghan politician, has five days to travel and is busy choosing between destinations. Her only condition is that it is not too hot. Goa, Kerala and Shimla in India are on her radar, and she hopes that the five-day-break will give her the energy to return to Kabul and continue her fight.
Outspoken and passionate, Naderi has been at the forefront of fighting for women's rights. “I don't want my position as a gift,” she says. “I am against slavery, whether it is by the Taliban or someone in a tie.” Instead of taking a “lift” to the position, she has chosen to “create her own stairs”. She contested elections from the Kabul province in 2010. Her father, Alhaj Sayed Mansoor Naderi, is a prominent Ismaili leader who was in exile in Uzbekistan during the Taliban years. Naderi, however, refused to have his pictures on her campaign posters. She won, but chose to resign five years later, refusing the extension of the parliament by President Ghani. “I felt that the public had voted me in for five years,” she said. Any extension had to be done by the people.
Naderi has also served as a senior advisor to president Ashraf Ghani and has recently resigned over “serious disagreements”. It took eight months for her to resign, as it was hoped that she would change her mind. But, Naderi refused to be swayed. Democracy in Afghanistan was not to “show” the world, she says. It had to be more. One of the biggest challenges she believes that Afghanistan faces at the moment is “true democracy”. The government, she believes, has failed to deliver.
She is not alone. The Ghani government has come under attack for not fulfilling the dream it promised. Corruption is an issue as is a delivery of services.“Afghanistan is not a normal country. We have to fight more than any other country for what we want,” she says. It is this anger against the government that is helping the Taliban make gains. There are reports that the Taliban have gained ground in the non-Pashtun areas, which goes beyond their stronghold.
Afghanistan is at a dangerous juncture. There is a peace deal being hammered out by the Americans, negotiated without the elected Afghan government at the table. “It is a dish being prepared in Doha, which will be eaten by Kabul,” as an Afghan leader quipped on the condition of anonymity. The special representative Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted earlier today that he was in Kabul and was working to promote intra-Afghan talks. So far, 17 years into the war, this has not happened. The Taliban have, over the past 17 years, as Naderi puts it, gained celebrity status: "The world thought the Taliban was a pure terrorism group [then], but now it sees them integrating..[and] not like Al Qaida and the ISIS,” she says.
This celebrity status of the Taliban—and the sheer number of processes that exist to get them back into the foldsuggests one thing: the Taliban is in the driving seat. And, it seems to be a deal for peace for the US and not peace for Afghanistan. The Afghan NSA Hamdullah Mohib recently took to Twitter to attack Khalilzad for having personal ambitions. He was reprimanded for “delegitimising” the government. The presidential elections have been postponed till September. The National Unity government, headed by president Ashraf Ghani, lacks unity. Now, with the postponement of the elections, there is talk of an interim government. A suggestions that political parties were considering anyway, till Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan suggested it.
For politicians like Naderi, the Taliban being part of the process does pose a risk. But, she is open to reconciliation. “I respect them, they also deserve peace. For the Taliban to join the community, they will have to be peaceful,” she says. “They have the right to live peacefully, their families and their children. Those children are not criminals—they have been brainwashed out of poverty and you are giving them guns. I don't think it is a view that we should label a community as bad. Coexistence means only that they should understand me. I should also understand them.”
However, she is clear the Taliban can only be part of the process and not dominate it. “But there are elements that scare us,” she says. “They are fanatics, they have have been equipped by our neighbours, by foreign elements with bad intentions. Also, they try to monopolise Islam. It will be unacceptable for me if they want to impose their translation of the sharia upon us. We can have debate and dialogue. We can listen to each other. We can advance Afghanistan by going that way. I don't want to do anything against the Taliban that is against their human rights. But I want them to do the same things for us.”
