Afghan woman defies Taliban government as accredited ambassador to Austria

VIENNA - The Taliban government asked her to leave. But for more than four years, Ms Manizha Bakhtari has defied the leadership in Kabul and remains accredited by Vienna as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Austria.

Since

returning to power

in August 2021, the Taliban authorities have sought to replace Ms Bakhtari with one of their own diplomats, because she was appointed by the former government.

When Ms Bakhtari, like many of her colleagues, received a letter from Taliban officials relieving her of her diplomatic duties, she simply ignored it.

“That was just a piece of paper for me,” she told AFP in an interview at the embassy’s downsized premises, after relocating from central Vienna with the help of the Afghan diaspora.

“I don’t recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, and they don’t have recognition here in Austria,” said 53-year-old Ms Bakhtari.

Vienna has so far refused to accredit Taliban-appointed diplomats, although the Austrian government has held direct talks with the Taliban authorities over deportations this year.

“Ms Bakhtari is still accredited as Afghanistan’s ambassador and permanent representative to international organisations in Austria,” a spokesperson for Austria’s foreign ministry confirmed to AFP on Oct 30.

Her embassy also offers limited consular services such as extending passports.

As the last Afghan woman accredited as an ambassador anywhere in the world, she was featured in an Austrian documentary that is currently showing in cinemas.

But the film has also painted a target on her back, with hate messages, including even death threats, frequently flooding her social media, said Ms Bakhtari.

“They call me a ‘dirty, ugly woman’ or even ‘whore’, who ‘cherishes Western values’, but I don’t care,” she said.

Despite promises not to return to the repressive measures seen during their first rule in the 1990s, public floggings and executions were re-imposed by the Taliban authorities.

“They’ve adopted draconian policies, especially towards women but also men, freedom of speech and the media,” Ms Bakhtari said.

‘Impacts all women’

Ms Bakhtari, a trained journalist who served as the chief of staff of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2009, said helping Afghan women and girls was “her mission”, as the Taliban government has “deliberately been erasing women from society”.

The Taliban authorities, who say that women’s rights are protected by Islamic law, have implemented what the United Nations has described as “gender apartheid”, banning girls and women from schools beyond the age of 12, and also from most jobs and public services.

In a bid to circumvent these prohibitions, Ms Bakhtari launched the “Daughters” programme that enables Afghan girls to receive support to study in secret underground schools or online.

But she warned that the Taliban administration’s “systematic oppression of women” was not confined to the country.

A recent trip to India

by UN-sanctioned Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi had exposed the leadership’s true nature, she said, when the Taliban official was forced to schedule a second press conference after facing backlash over excluding women journalists from the first.

“They have sold the narrative to the world that they’re a new generation of the Taliban, but that didn’t happen. And when they go abroad, they try to impose their policy of not accepting women,” Ms Bakhtari said.

“If it impacts the situation of women in Afghanistan, it actually impacts all women around the world,” said Ms Bakhtari, the daughter of renowned poet Wasef Bakhtari.

Taliban officials in Vienna

And with every new measure, the Taliban authorities are testing “how far they can go”, said Ms Bakhtari, who also used to be Afghanistan’s ambassador to the Nordic countries.

In September, they

temporarily shut down the internet

until they “realised that even they cannot do anything anymore, with flights being cancelled”.

Even though Taliban officials were recently in Vienna for a meeting with the Austrian interior ministry ahead of the deportation of an Afghan man in late October, Ms Bakhtari said they didn’t show up at her doorstep.

“The Taliban don’t want to talk to me or come to me. I’m a woman, you know,” she said, adding that she would be open to a peaceful conversation with them.

When contacted by AFP, the Taliban government’s diplomatic service did not immediately comment. AFP