Suspended aid chief to ask Taliban leaders to lift ban on female personnel

Kabul:

The head of a major aid group that stopped work in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned female NGO workers said Thursday he would write to senior administration figures in Kandahar asking them to change policy.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters it was important to engage with the leadership in the southern city, home to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

“The letter I am drafting will read: We know you, we have worked in Taliban-controlled areas for many years. You know us.

“You know that our female workers always use hijab. They have a male protector on … long journeys. Your people are suffering because of your ban on female workers.”

The Taliban administration last month ordered all local and foreign aid groups to stop employing female employees until further notice.

It said the move, which was condemned globally, was justified because some of the women did not follow the Taliban’s interpretation of the Islamic dress code.

Several NGOs suspended operations in response, saying they needed female workers to reach women in the conservative country.

Egeland, who visited the capital Kabul this week, said officials there told her they were in favor of women working in the NGO, but that the order came from Kandahar. A spokesman for the Taliban administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Egeland said that he had arranged meetings with the Ulema Council in Kandahar, made up of religious scholars and the provincial governor, because it was not possible for foreign humanitarian agencies to meet Akhundzada directly.

But after bad weather halted flights, he said he would instead write and try to arrange online meetings.

He said he welcomed some signs of flexibility in health and other sectors, where some female and male workers worked alongside each other. But he demanded a complete withdrawal of the ban.

“Our male staff cannot go to widows, single mothers and their children, all vulnerable women groups here and thus they have been prevented from doing all the work,” he said.

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