could not operate as it did in all other member states, ‘we should
pack up and go’. He added that the ‘international community has a
standard and if you want to be a member of the club you have to
abide by the rules’ (Associated Press, 28 March 1998). The UN
Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira
de Mello, demanded ‘written assurances that international humani-
tarian law and principles will be respected’ (Agence France Presse,
24 March 1998). Some such written assurances were given in a
Memorandum of Understanding signed in Kabul on 13 May 1998
by the Taliban ‘Planning Minister’, Qari Din Muhammad, and the
UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator. In other respects, how-
ever, the document proved a disaster for the UN, since Article 13,
in a section entitled ‘Access to Health and Education’, stated that
‘women’s access to health and education will need to be gradual’
(for the full text, see International Journal of Refugee Law, 10, 3:
586–92). This prompted a scathing attack from the Executive
Director of Physicians for Human Rights, Leonard S. Rubinstein,
who stated that the UN ‘endorsement of Taliban restrictions on
women’s basic rights to education and health care is a betrayal of
international human rights standards and of the female population
of Afghanistan’ (Physicians for Human Rights, 1998b). It is one
thing to recognise that progress on gender issues will be slow and
may involve some uneasy compromises, but it is another thing
altogether to endorse such compromises in advance. This specific
issue, however, took a back seat when US ‘Tomahawk’ cruise mis-
sile strikes in August 1998 prompted a temporary UN withdrawal
from Afghanistan.
Despite these difficulties, the UN had one significant success in
the political realm – not in terms of inducing the parties to negoti-
ate a settlement, but in terms of assembling a strong team to man-
age mediation should the situation on the ground change. After the
resignation of Mahmoud Mestiri, the UN Special Mission had been
headed by a German diplomat, Dr Norbert Holl, who made no
progress and failed to energise the Mission. However, on 28 July
1997, the Secretary-General appointed Ambassador Lakhdar
Brahimi as his Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Brahimi was a
The Rise and Rule of the Taliban, 1994-2001 247