KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban representatives have held unprecedented meetings with a large delegation of Afghan women in Norway’s capital this week, an apparently incremental step in efforts to end a bitter 14-year war that has killed thousands, officials said Friday.
Though striking, it remains unclear whether such meetings can bridge the chasm between rhetoric and reality as insurgents continue to threaten and kill women seeking education and employment as a constitutional right in Afghanistan.
At least nine prominent Afghan women, including five lawmakers and high-profile rights advocates, traveled to Oslo for the talks with Taliban men — members of a failed regime notorious for its brutalization of women.
The talks are not likely to have been a meeting of the minds — at least two of the women participants have survived assassination attacks by militants and most of the women at the Oslo meetings are likely to have experienced threats and harassment by men.
While the meetings were informal, they signal a potential for the Taliban to shift on hard-line positions to facilitate an eventual dialogue with the Afghan government. They also highlight fears among Afghan women about just what the Kabul administration might be prepared to sacrifice to end the war, once a formal dialogue begins.
The talks were part of the Norwegian government’s efforts to broker peace in Afghanistan. Both Taliban members and Afghan officials confirmed the talks but offered few details.
“This meeting with the opposition is not a formal peace dialogue,” the Taliban said in a statement distributed to media.
Afghan officials said that the talks took place June 3 and 4 as part of a long-term Norwegian initiative for Afghan peace. Norway’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Frode Andersen said the meetings would conclude Friday.
At least five female lawmakers, including prominent women’s rights advocates Fawzia Koofi and Shukria Barakzai, took part, attending as “independent representatives” from parliament, one of the Afghan officials said.
“They are not part of any (Afghan) government initiative, and were invited to an unofficial meeting, not as official delegates,” he said.
At least three of the women are members of the government’s High Peace Council negotiating body, and one is a women’s education activist, the other Afghan officials said.
The Taliban position on women’s rights is mired in an extreme interpretation of Islam.
Their recent statements have been perceived as a softening of opposition to women learning and working, though Heather Barr, a senior researcher on women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said actions continue to speak louder than words and that there is a “massive disconnect between what the Taliban” say and what they do.
“They come out with great rhetoric which some people are willing to accept because they want to see a ‘changed’ Taliban in terms of a victory after so many years of war,” she said. But she also noted the Taliban use of vague language, terms such as “principles of Islam” when referring to women’s rights.
The Islamic militant group, during its 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan, banned women and girls from education and work, and ruled they could not go outside unless wearing an enveloping burka and accompanied by a male relative.
