NEW YORK—Afghan women returned to the United Nations this week after diplomats discovered that five years of discussing them had still not technically counted as speaking with them.
Nargis Nehan and Hanifa Girowal joined Afghan advocates at UNGA, where delegates praised their courage before returning to the more delicate question of how much courage could be accommodated without affecting engagement with the Taliban.
Meetra Alokozay, Metra Mehran and Farishta Sakhi were also welcomed into the international process, now entering its advanced phase in which Afghan women may sit at the table provided all consequential decisions have already left the building.
“We hear you,” Richard Bennett assured the fictional panel while checking whether the Taliban delegation had replied to his WhatsApp.
Organizers celebrated the breakthrough by placing “Afghan Women” prominently on the agenda between Regional Stability and Coffee.
The women quickly agreed that Afghanistan desperately needed a unified female voice. Negotiations then collapsed over which woman’s voice would be unified above the others.
By lunch, participants had established a Leadership Council, Steering Committee, Advisory Board and Interim Coordination Mechanism, each created to prevent the dangerous concentration of leadership occurring in the other three.
Asila Wardak and Parwana Ibrahimkhel arrived outside the fictional proceedings demanding equal representation, better seating and clarification on why the delegation had once again achieved gender equality without achieving chair equality.
Bennett proposed rotating the leadership. The proposal was rejected unanimously on the grounds that rotation might eventually give somebody else a turn.
Organizers nevertheless declared the forum historic after producing a group photograph containing enough aspiring chairpersons to govern Afghanistan several times over.
The Taliban welcomed the breakthrough, saying Afghan women had finally demonstrated they were fully qualified for Afghan politics.
Bennett ordered the table sent to Doha before anyone could become its president.