The Challenges of the UN’s Doha Process for Afghanistan

At the end of June, envoys and representatives from more than 25 countries and international organizations gathered in Doha, Qatar, along with representatives from the Taliban under an UN-facilitated framework. This meeting was the third of its kind, widely referred to as “Doha 3,” and part of a process to establish a more coordinated and coherent global approach to Afghanistan’s challenges and the Taliban’s rule.

It did not produce decisive outcomes, other than the commitment of all countries to continue such meetings — still a significant agreement in the current geopolitical climate. Meanwhile, Western donor states and human rights defenders strongly criticized the latest gathering for the UN’s inclusion of the Taliban, and perceived concessions to the group.

The first meeting took place in May 2023, and the second was held this February. The first two meetings were chaired by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who delegated this third meeting to Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo. These meetings were oriented around the UN Security Council’s call for an independent assessment of international engagement with Afghanistan, mandated last spring and delivered to the Council last November. The Security Council accepted the assessment’s recommendations in late December, though with Russia and China abstaining — and the Taliban protesting strongly against a few key provisions.

The Taliban were not invited to the first meeting, where Guterres worked to identify global common ground on how to engage the Taliban. In February, the Taliban rejected the UN’s invitation to attend the second meeting, objecting to the appointment of a UN special envoy, protesting the UN’s invitations for Afghan civil society to attend, and complaining of matters of protocol. In short, the Taliban demanded to be treated, at least de facto, as the government of Afghanistan. In preparations for the third gathering, the UN took pains to persuade the Taliban that attending was in their best interests. DiCarlo visited Kabul and met with Taliban leaders beforehand, as did a number of Western and regional diplomats. In these consultations, the Taliban made demands that largely reiterated their position on Doha 2.

Notably, the UN offered an agenda that seemed tailored to the Taliban’s interest — as well as the key interests of neighboring states and regional powers like China and Russia. The UN proposed three topics, two of which were ultimately selected: (1) economic issues, especially the question of support to the Afghan private sector, and (2) counternarcotics.

Significant Criticism

The focus on securing the Taliban’s attendance for Doha 3 prompted a groundswell of criticism from Afghan civil society and human rights defenders. In the weeks leading up to Doha 3, officials from a number of donor states expressed frustration, and several even pondered the possibility of downgrading or canceling their attendance.

The criticism was leveled on two different planes. Publicly, much of the backlash against the UN’s planning focused on the lack of civil society representation at the main event, highlighting the absence of Afghan women. The lack of women’s rights on the public version of the meeting’s agenda was seen as a further, unnecessary concession to the Taliban. 

It is worth noting that states discussed women’s rights extensively with the Taliban at Doha 3, and the UN always planned on this — keeping the topic off the public agenda was an attempt at compromise. Moreover, at the previous two meetings, Afghan civil society did not participate in the main events (at Doha 2 in February, a voluntary side meeting took place with six Afghans involved in activism, journalism, and development).

But faced with the prospect of the Taliban sitting down with the international community under the UN’s banner, many insisted that Afghan women must also have a seat at the table. A campaign of advocacy and journalistic coverage swamped Doha 3 preparations with negative publicity, and complicated the positions of participating Western states.

Some nations disagreed with details of the UN’s approach but were willing to give the UN room to maneuver, at least in principle. Their complaint was structural: Frustration with a lack of UN coordination or even communication of goals and strategy. In weeks leading up to the meeting, more than one donor state official privately expressed doubt as to whether UN leadership had a strategic direction for this meeting format and the process it was meant to support.

Reactions and Reasoning

Less than two weeks before Doha 3, a group of major donors, including the United States, drafted a collective communique to the UN The letter, not made public but leaked widely, was a sternly worded rebuke on both the substance and planning process for the impending meeting.

The signatories emphasized the importance of not marginalizing Afghan civil society and noted domestic political demands to hold the Taliban accountable on human rights. One Western official described the signatories’ perception that regional countries’ interests seemed to carry more weight in the UN’s decision making than those of the largest donors supporting aid and development in Afghanistan.

This letter implicitly threatened that donor states (including signatories such as Canada, the UK and France) might scale down their participation in the gathering. In particular, the signatories insisted on engagement with civil society in some form. The UN accommodated this demand — some UN officials privately noted that it had always been their intent to involve civil society, at the same level as they had been during Doha 2, and it was simply a matter of careful negotiation with the Taliban to ensure they would not pull out. But the UN also preserved the originally proposed agenda, and largely stuck to its approach.

Some donors went further: Canada published a reprimand of the UN’s approach to the conference — though they also ultimately attended.

In the end, on the second day of Doha 3, a side event was held with five Afghan women and two men, most of them residing inside Afghanistan — similar in scope to the inclusion of civil society at Doha 2.

Speaking to the press from Doha, DiCarlo hinted at the logic underlying UN’s approach, saying the brief was to bring the Taliban together with the world’s envoys in these meetings. This was an intriguing, almost misleading representation of the Security Council’s resolution in December 2023. Yes, the UN was encouraged to continue facilitating the envoy meeting format, but with very little detail specified. Where did this brief, which seemed to privilege the Taliban, come from?

The UN was compelled to find a balance between the agendas of Western states, many of which demand to see the Taliban adhere to international standards on human rights before proceeding any further with development assistance or economic normalization, and those of regional powers, eager to see nearby Afghanistan stabilize. Sources suggest that key regional states — including permanent Security Council members Russia and China — saw little reason to continue engaging in a UN process that did not include the Taliban. In other words, while Western frustrations over the UN’s direction spilled into public view, regional states may have been even closer to abandoning the meeting format.

There was a basic theory of change underpinning Doha 3 preparations: the UN assessment, and all of its recommendations, were intended to break free from the deadlock that had overtaken international relations with the Taliban. To move past this deadlock, UN officials have said the most difficult demands should be set aside until later in this engagement process. For now, they assert, discussion should focus on overlapping interests. Only after much more trust has been built between the suspicious Taliban and a host of doubtful states, do these officials feel it makes sense to bring the most contentious issues to the table.

The counterargument is that such sequencing awards the Taliban legitimacy and emboldens their repressive policy agenda. The rebuttal to this view, however, is that waiting for the Taliban to meet demands before expanding assistance, knowing the Taliban are unlikely to budge, is a decision to cut off 40 million Afghans from the rest of the world. These arguments on how to approach engaging with such a difficult regime are not new — they remain much the same as before the UN assessment proposed a roadmap to move past them.

Now What?

Undersecretary-general DiCarlo and other UN leaders have stressed that Doha 3 is but one meeting in a long-term process. But privately, officials have made clear that DiCarlo and other UN leaders do not have the bandwidth to continue managing the Doha meeting format, much less any broader process it might spur. The negative reactions and public controversy around Doha 3 have only lessened the UN’s enthusiasm to occupy center stage as host and facilitator.

The most efficient solution is one that has been mired in Security Council politics from the beginning. Last year’s assessment recommended appointing a UN official for Afghanistan, an envoy or coordinator in addition to Special Representative Roza Atunbayeva who manages UN presence in the country, to carry out the obviously full-time job of organizing an international engagement process. However, the Taliban’s objections to such an appointment, along with the lack of Russian and Chinese enthusiasm, may prove to be insurmountable.

In spite of the controversy beforehand and the difficult path ahead, Doha 3 did make concrete progress toward more coordinated international engagement. Attending nations tentatively agreed to establish technical-level working groups on the chief agenda items: private-sector economic issues and counternarcotics. More work remains before the concept can be finalized, and so this outcome was not formally announced from Doha. But such working groups will open new channels of dialogue between donors, regional states and technocrats from Taliban-run ministries — with the aim of streamlining and improving assistance to the Afghan people.

The Taliban have thus far kept mum about the conference, other than claiming that the world heard and accepted their messaging. Their chief spokesman, who led the delegation to Doha, declined to commit to participation in future meetings, saying that each time, Taliban leadership would determine if the engagement would be beneficial.

The controversy surrounding Doha 3 revealed that, while most countries (and the Taliban) are willing to entertain discussion about a difficult roadmap forward, many are also still insistent: the other side must give something first. Neither Western donor states nor the Taliban’s leadership are likely to bend when it comes to the group’s draconian domestic policies, at least not in the foreseeable future.

These high levels of mistrust require a delicately managed process, in which all sides cautiously inch forward, testing each other, assured that all sides will benefit if they continue to move forward together. Doha 3 illustrated how badly such a process requires an empowered, dedicated individual or office to keep all sides incentivized to do so.

The UN is uniquely positioned to provide this sort of leadership; with a growing gap between the approach of donors and regional states, there is no alternative. But is the UN itself, as a vulnerable institution increasingly underfunded and under siege, sufficiently incentivized to try and provide that sort of leadership, while under constant criticism?

For its part, Washington should encourage the UN to not let the Doha meeting format wither on the vine. In spite of flaws in planning and execution, and the controversy these have drawn, the international coordination these meetings seek to build remains vital. US national interests are best served through careful, principled engagement with the Taliban: the counterterrorism threat in the region remains critical and cannot be wished away, and the Afghan people’s dire economic conditions and food insecurity threaten regional stability (even Europe, through transnational migration).

Doha 3 made clear that the current meeting format, and how it is facilitated, requires some structural change. Change would ideally come in the form of the UN appointing a dedicated official to manage this complex process, but as noted above, the Taliban are fiercely opposed to the idea, deeming it a downgrading measure meant for conflict-riddled countries. If such an appointment proves impossible, creative solutions — such as empowering the UN mission based in Afghanistan to facilitate some of this process, and more robust coordination between donors seeking to transition from emergency aid to sustainable development — should be pursued.

This article was originally published by the United States Institute of Peace.