By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 4 -- As the US prepares to pull back from Afghanistan, moving at the UN to make it easier to take Taliban off the sanctions list and encouraging Hamid Karzai to negotiate with them, what is the place of women's rights and human rights more generally?
While in Washington there is much telegenic hand-wringing on the topic -- for example, last month Af-Pak czar Douglas Lute had himself filmed providing assurances of US commitment to a delegation of professional Afghan women some of whom worked for the UN -- the US embassy in Kabul is surprisingly quiet.
Perhaps this is just diplomacy, of a decidedly realist bend: don't highlight Western ideas of human rights in a country where the US wants to say that its massive military spending has resulted in enough improvements to leave. Some contrast this with the US embassy in Pakistan's June 26 LGBT event. Why not hold that in Kabul? Or Baghdad, for that matter? And why not actually offer US asylum to those facing imprisonment and death due to discrimination?
The wider international community, too, seems quite prepared to let bygones be bygones in Afghanistan. After UN staff member Louis Maxwell was executed, by Afghan national forces, the UN has never pushed the Karzai government to conduct the investigation a UN panel called for.
More recently, after seven UN staff were killed by protesters in Mazar-i-Sharif in April, there has been very little follow-up by the UN. And where is the new head of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, on the topic of women's rights in Afghanistan as the US and other powers pull out? We'll see.
