Why this humanitarian NGO leader flew to Kabul to meet with the Taliban

Without women workers, there would be no humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, says Jan Egeland.

Egeland is the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that supports displaced people and provides education, food assistance, clean water, legal support and more.

But he said the group would no longer be able to provide services in Afghanistan after the Taliban issued the decree prohibit women from working in domestic or international NGOs.

Egeland therefore spent only a week in Kabul, meeting with Taliban officials and pressuring them to reverse the decree. He is the first NGO leader to visit Afghanistan for talks with the Taliban since the ban came into effect more than two weeks ago.

He spoke to As it happens host Nil Köksal about the talks, and why he still has hope for the future. This is part of the conversation.

Have you made any progress in the talks with the Taliban so far?

We can at least meet the Taliban at the highest level in Kabul. And we have been very blunt. We told the Taliban leaders that they are forcing a temporary stop to all work in Afghanistan because they have banned all women workers.

We cannot work without female colleagues. We wouldn’t be able to do it without them. So this is an existential crisis for humanitarian work in a country where 23 million – more than half of the population – need humanitarian aid.

What did Taliban leaders say in response?

Paradoxically, of course, he said he agreed with me. There must be education for women and girls. There are no restrictions on women humanitarian workers or workers in non-governmental organizations. He agreed with me that he broke, as an organization, his promise to us.

But it was a decision that came from the top leadership in Kandahar, which is now in the corners of the more extreme Taliban who want to return to the dark days of the 1990s.

So where does this leave you now? Will they bring your message back to a higher level? Is there any hope?

There is indeed hope. I hear time and again that there is work on it [new] ordered. At [most recent] The decree actually came on Christmas Eve … banning all female workers. Before, there was a decree on forbid education [at the] secondary level and tertiary universities.

[I am told] there will be a new decree that finds a solution to the problem, which means that we can still have female colleagues and even carry out education at the level we want.

The important issue is when will this come? Hopefully next week. But it might take a year. And what will happen in that year?

I know you are talking to ambassadors from other countries. You just left a meeting with a UN representative. Can you tell me what you discussed there, and if another conversation helped you get where you need to be?

Now I’m trying to get to Kandahar, where the leader sits.

The Embassy of Qatar and the Embassy of Turkey have promised to help. He connected well in Afghanistan.

The UN unites with us in non-governmental organizations in this regard. The ban didn’t last long…it took effect. Maybe in the future.

I hope to see a united front from the international community saying that we cannot and we will not be able to do without our female colleagues.

One of the reasons, of course, is that men cannot provide direct assistance to women. It is according to Afghan tradition, long before the Taliban, which means that widows, single mothers, etc., will now be eliminated.

For us, this is a fundamental value, which I explained to the Taliban, that we have equality between the two sexes.

Do you think you will be able to visit the leaders in Kandahar?

I am trying to …. We have lined up a meeting with Islamic leaders in Kandahar, where I will be blunt, similar to what I have done here in Kabul.

We have to win this. It is a war of values. We have to win.

You mention tens of millions of people in Afghanistan and little about what they are fighting against. But can you tell us more about the everyday reality for people, and the kinds of things they do… for a living?

It has been steadily worsening, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. And it’s too bad that this happened in the shadow of the terrible war in Europe in Ukraine.

Canada, Norway, [the] The US and all other NATO countries are leaving Afghanistan. You will remember that the soldiers and the development workers and the diplomats went to the door one and a half years ago and left us, the humanitarians, with a civilian population of 40 million.

Is there a route you see where you would get that help for those who need it the most, even if this decision is not lifted?

If he is not appointed, I cannot see how he can carry out principled, effective, efficient, and monitored humanitarian work. So we are entering an extraordinary crisis.

That said again, I believe there will be a reversal of this. There will be a new decree that will activate our work.

We are working hard on this. We need help, though. So hopefully more countries will get involved, more countries will push. the Islamic state must push. Neighboring countries should push.

The women and children of Afghanistan deserve all the help they can get. Today, six million may go hungry. Twenty million people need food aid. There are several million internally displaced. However, there are large communities without roofs in the cold and snow and winter rains in the mountains of Afghanistan.

It couldn’t be more gloomy really. But we didn’t give up.

We have heard some reports about some of the extreme measures that people have to take in order to survive in their families. Can you tell me anything about that sort of thing?

Extreme action, indeed. There are other child marriages, [more] child bride. There is more human trafficking. There are other remedies. And more and more families are in debt because they can no longer afford to live. He has no income and is in debt to others, which means the family is in ruins for a long time.

I have argued for the Afghan National Bank’s assets frozen in Washington and elsewhere to be released. Of course, that must also come with the condition that girls can have an education and that women can work in our organization.

But we will certainly have more influence if the West chooses to re-engage and not just sit in the distance on the fence.

But do the leaders of the Taliban in Kandahar … really care what the neighboring countries and what the Western countries are talking about at this time?

I don’t know the closest adviser to the emir and myself [think]. I don’t know. But there are, of course, many Taliban leaders who know that they are now in control. He ruled over 40 million people. He didn’t want to see his people – his family, his relatives, his mother and grandmother and aunts and nephews – die.

Now, there is great pressure on the Taliban for a more rational and less extreme policy.

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With files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A edited for length and clarity.