The Kabul delegation sent to Qatar’s Doha will also include women for talks expected to start on April 20.
The government of Afghanistan has announced a list of 250 people, including around 50 women, who will head to Qatar for talks with the Taliban later this week.
The names were released by officials in Kabul on Tuesday, although the Taliban has refused to talk directly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government, saying it would recognise participants only as “ordinary” Afghans.
The meeting – a gathering known as “intra-Afghan” dialogue – is expected to last for two days, starting on Saturday, April 20.
The list includes representatives of political parties, government officials, opposition figures, former fighters, women’s rights activists, war victims’ families, clerics, youth and media groups, as well as tribal elders and members of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council (AHPC), a body that
oversees peace efforts but does not represent the government.
It is unclear whether all those on the list will attend.
Afghan women have repeatedly voiced their concerns at having been left out of the peace process.
When they were in power (1996-2001), Taliban officials would not allow women to work, attend school or leave home without a guardian. Afghan women are concerned that the group could reimpose such restrictions if they are allowed to return as a political entity.
While the Taliban previously met with Afghan representatives and politicians in Russia in February, those talks did not include members of Ghani’s government.
The spokesman for former President Hamid Karzai, who was at the Moscow talks, said Karzai supported the upcoming “intra-Afghan” conference in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but would not be attending.
