My first meeting with a senior government official took place within two days of my arrival. Still in Covid quarantine, I dialled into a video conference between President Ghani’s National Security Adviser Hamidullah Mohib, and a group of ambassadors from the major donor countries. The subject was Women, Peace and Security, a theme of UN-sponsored development work. During the 20 years of the republic gender equality had come a long way from the Taliban years. But there was still a lot to do. There had been reports of sexual abuse of women police officers in the Interior Ministry. We needed the government to understand that this kind of incident risked damaging the confidence of the major donors; in addition, the republic’s treatment of women and girls was a fundamental and defining difference in values between the republic and the Taliban with whom it was at war.
I made a more general point, which became a central theme in my meetings with senior Afghan politicians over the weeks that followed. The republic’s leaders needed to explain to ordinary Afghans in very clear and compelling terms what was at stake for them – why it mattered deeply to them that the Taliban should not fight their way back to power.