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Jaw-jaw instead of war-war. BLUF: there was a conference with unnamed participants except Ahmad Massoud, front man of the National Resistance Front. This is the second annual — hopefully in the coming year the resistance will be more effective than they were in the past. [GlobalVoices] The Second Vienna Conference on Afghanistan was held from April 24 to 26 with the participation of nearly 30 anti-Taliban
 ...Arabic for students ...
political figures, rights activists, and military commanders. At the end of the conference, the participants issued a declaration to support all forms of resistance against the Taliban and called on the international community to recognize and support of all forms of resistance. Another important outcome was the announcement of plans to create a single national umbrella organization against the Taliban.
The conference participants also drew attention to the systematic exclusion of women from the public sphere as gender apartheid and condemned the UN's silence around the current situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. Michael McCaul, US Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, responded to the conference by commending "the efforts of the anti-Taliban forces to unite against the Taliban's oppression, especially the oppression of Afghan women and girls and the Afghan allies of the United States."
As the international community is starting to discuss how to engage with the Taliban, the importance of the Vienna conference will continue to grow. According to Ali Maisam Nazary, the Head of Foreign Relations for the National Resistance® Front of Afghanistan (NRF), the main military resistance group to the Taliban, the purpose of the conference was to build trust and unity between political, civil, and military actors opposed to the Taliban. The conference remains the only platform for the opposition to discuss the current crisis in Afghanistan, speak with one voice, and remind the world of the alternative to Taliban rule there.
ANTI-TALIBAN RESISTANCE IS UNIFYING
This meeting was a follow-up of the First Vienna Conference held in September 2022. It was organized one year after the Afghan government’s collapse on August 15, 2021, which culminated in the escape of Mohammad Ashraf Ghani
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money...
Ahmadzai, Afghanistan’s president at the time, from the country. The first conference brought together Afghanistan’s political figures, women’s rights activists, former members of the parliament, journalists, and academics. It concluded with the issuance of a declaration that highlighted political, economic, social, and humanitarian issues brought up by the Taliban rule in the country.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, on August 15, 2021, after 20 years of fighting against the US backed government. The collapse of the Afghan government came after the Doha Agreement, signed between the US and the Taliban on February 29, 2020, without the involvement of the Afghan government. It led to the withdrawal of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
forces from the country, exposing Afghan National Security Forces vulnerable to the Taliban attacks.
Afghanistan has seen drastic negative changes in the past 21 months since the Taliban came to power. The backsliding has taken place in all spheres of life, including systemic violation of women's and human rights
...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you...
, assassination and torture of former militaries, forceful displacement of people from their homes, and ethnic discrimination. All the political power is concentrated in the hands of the Pashtun tribe, to which the Taliban belong. A glaring example of the Taliban caused oppression has been banning women and girls from attending schools and working.
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