The Taliban celebrated five years in power in Afghanistan on Saturday with military parades, as campaigners urged Britain to confront the regime over its enforcement of gender apartheid.
The anniversary commemoration in Kabul featured a parade displaying Humvee military trucks that were abandoned during the chaotic withdrawal of a US-led coalition force in 2021. The regime rolled out the captured vehicles as victory trophies through the streets of the Afghan capital.
The authorities also hosted a cricket match and other sporting contests to mark five years since returning to power, events from which women and girls were banned even from attending as spectators.
Leading women's rights campaigner Baroness Helena Kennedy, a Labour peer in the UK Parliament, said Britain should put pressure on international allies such as India and Qatar that maintain contact with the Taliban.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Kennedy called for targeted diplomatic efforts to influence the leadership in Kabul.
"What is happening is gender apartheid. The extremes against women are extraordinary," Kennedy said.
"You apply pressure [through] the people who are speaking to, and who are in contact with, the leadership there. You try to drive a wedge between the people who are more progressive and those who are still in the Dark Ages," she added.
Celebrations in Kabul
Patriotic music blared across city streets on Saturday as Afghans packed into pick-up trucks and rickshaws in convoys festooned with government flags.
Demonstrating the regime's historical ties, one vehicle displayed a photograph showing former Taliban leader Mullah Omar alongside al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
The anniversary events take place under an extreme interpretation of Islamic law enforced through hundreds of edicts handed down by the regime's reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akinhundzada.
Under these official edicts, women are excluded from public areas and banned from most places of work.
Girls are denied an education in mainstream schools beyond the age of 12, although religious madrasas still take girls of all ages.
Diplomatic Isolation and Aid Crisis
Diplomats say promises to defend women's rights, made by the Taliban after its fighters took control of the country in a lightning offensive, have been abandoned with the infiltration into government of an extremist elite.
Britain, which also withdrew its troops during the 2021 exodus, is among Western countries which have closed their embassies in Kabul.
With Afghan national assets frozen in European banks, there is growing concern that isolating the Taliban is failing to deliver political or social change.
The diplomatic standoff comes as an estimated 22 million Afghans, representing half of the total population, rely on some form of foreign aid to stay alive.
Outside diplomatic influence in Afghanistan is now largely in the hands of regional powers including India, China, Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
One Western diplomat pointed to the United States decision to close its Agency for International Development, which once led the world's approach on almost every Afghan issue, as the "real diplomatic gap."
The diplomat told the BBC: "It's extraordinary given the scale of Western effort from 2001 to 2021 how ignored Afghanistan is now."
