Latest news with #ManizhaBakhtari
The Diplomat
a day ago
- Politics
- The Diplomat
‘The Last Ambassador': An Afghan Diplomat Without a Country
Manizha Bakhtari may no longer represent a state, but she represents a nation of women fighting to be seen, heard, and educated. 'The Last Ambassador,' a new documentary screened at Vienna's Filmcasino in the city's 5th district on July 1, offered a moving portrait of Manizha Bakhtari, Afghanistan's ambassador to Austria, who continues to serve her people despite no longer representing a recognized government. Organized by the Maltese delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to mark the International Day of Women in Diplomacy, the event brought together diplomats, civil society leaders, and human rights advocates to reflect on the cost of silence, and the power of principled resistance. Directed by Austrian filmmaker Natalie Halla, 'The Last Ambassador' was filmed over three and a half years, blending observational footage, interviews, and personal archives to chronicle Bakhtari's resistance from exile. 'I have dedicated my whole life to Afghanistan and its people,' Bakhtari says in the film, a statement that defines not only her career but also her personal sacrifices after Afghanistan's political collapse. Since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has ceased to function as a democratic state. The Islamic Emirate of Taliban remains unrecognized by the international community yet governs with totalitarian control, particularly over women. While many diplomats resigned or were dismissed, Bakhtari chose another path. She remains ambassador to Austria, not representing the Taliban, but defending the Afghan people. 'I do not represent a government, but I represent my people,' she declared. In her virtual post-screening remarks from Canada, Bakhtari echoed the film's themes: diplomacy, she argued, demands moral courage as much as protocol. 'Is diplomacy only about maneuvering within formal structures, or can it also be about raising our voices when justice is denied?' Her stance challenges traditional diplomacy, suggesting advocacy and moral clarity may matter more than allegiance to any state. Gender Apartheid and a Nation in Collapse Under Taliban rule, Bakhtari described Afghanistan as a humanitarian catastrophe, especially for women and girls. 'Girls are systematically denied the right to education. Women are erased from public life,' she said. 'A deliberate system of gender apartheid is in place.' Since 2021, the Taliban have barred girls from secondary school and university, excluded women from work, and restricted their movement without a male guardian, violating international treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which Afghanistan ratified in 2003. 'This is not a slogan,' Bakhtari stressed. 'Gender equality is a fundamental element of human rights.' Alongside the Afghan diaspora, she supports a global campaign to recognize 'gender apartheid' as a crime under international law. Codifying the term, she argued, would validate Afghan women's experiences and enable accountability. 'Language matters. A legal framework matters,' she told the audience. 'Without it, how can we hold regimes like the Taliban accountable?' The Cost of Engagement Bakhtari warned against international normalization of the Taliban, in remarks that came mere days before Russia announced it was officially recognizing the regime. While some argue for limited engagement to deliver aid, she rejects the approach. 'Engaging with the Taliban does not help the people of Afghanistan,' she said. 'For four years, the United Nations and many countries have tried to include them. But they do not listen, and they do not change.' She urged organizations to avoid legitimizing the Taliban through invitations to negotiations, warning that unconditional engagement emboldens repression. Among the regime's most alarming policies is the gutting of formal education. Bakhtari cited data showing 6,813 madrassas (Islamic seminaries) and 5,000 private religious schools operating nationwide. While not opposed to religious education, she stressed it cannot replace formal schooling. 'For four years, our girls have not been going to school. That affects this generation and the next,' she said. 'We are educating another generation of extremists.' She called for international support for underground and online schools to prepare Afghan girls for a future beyond Taliban rule. A New Kind of Diplomacy Over the past four years, Bakhtari has redefined diplomacy, leading campaigns, speaking at global forums, and confronting institutional complacency. Yet she insists this is not activism replacing diplomacy, but diplomacy reimagined. 'My intention was and is to uphold diplomatic norms while remaining firm in my demands,' she said. 'Our hard-fought gains are at risk of being reversed. We must explore new tools and new approaches within diplomacy.' In her vision, diplomacy is not compromise, it is the defense of values. And values, she said, must endure even when governments fall. While the film focuses on Bakhtari's public role, it also reveals personal moments, her wedding, memories of her late father, a celebrated Afghan poet who died in Los Angeles. These scenes root her identity not just in politics but in a profound connection to her homeland. The documentary ends with a haunting sequence: Bakhtari standing at the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, gazing across the river at her country. It is as close as she can get, a moment of exile and longing, visibly moving. Here, the emotional weight of her role becomes undeniable: so near to home, yet unable to return. 'The Last Ambassador' is more than a documentary. It is a statement of resistance, and a call to action. It showcases a woman who stripped of her official mandate, refuses to surrender her voice. 'We must uphold the principles we have established over centuries, regardless of the wishes of a few politicians who may think otherwise,' Bakhtari concluded. Her story is one of a diplomat turned advocate, a patriot in exile, a woman who cannot go home but will not look away. As the audience left Vienna's Filmcasino, one truth was clear: Manizha Bakhtari may no longer represent a state, but she represents a nation of women fighting to be seen, heard, and educated. And as long as that fight continues, her diplomacy, bold, moral, and unyielding, belongs on the world stage.
The Independent
19-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Meet the last female Afghan ambassador as she leads the resistance against the Taliban
Manizha Bakhtari is on a mission to show that resisting the Taliban doesn't mean 'wanting a war' again in her home country. As the last serving female ambassador from Afghanistan anywhere in the world, she is at the forefront of efforts to deny the Islamist group the international recognition it badly craves. The UN still refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the Taliban regime in Kabul, in place since Nato forces withdrew from the country and the last democratically-elected government collapsed in August 2021. Individual countries are following the UN's lead, but many now host Afghan diplomatic missions led by Taliban appointees, often out of practicality rather than ideology. Austria, where Bakhtari leads the Afghan embassy, has held firm. And from there, Bakhtari is trying to spread the message across Europe that it would be a mistake to recognise or deal with a Taliban regime that fosters extremism and denies women many of the most fundamental rights. Her story has started gaining attention, and is now the subject of an 80-minute documentary entitled The Last Ambassador that received a standing ovation at last month's Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It follows her journey from first being appointed as envoy to Austria from the previous Ashraf Ghani-led administration to her present status as head of a mission disowned by Kabul. It also shows her activities running secret classes for Afghan girls banned by the Taliban from attending school. In an interview with The Independent at a conference on Afghanistan's future hosted by Madrid earlier this year, Bakhtari explains what resistance means for her. 'Resisting the Taliban doesn't mean that I want war in Afghanistan,' she says. 'That is how many politicians treat us in this world, believe me – they see [the word] resistance and they're like 'you are warlords and you want another war in your country'. It is very painful, you know, because resistance does not mean to take arms again. It means to stand against injustice.' The Taliban has done its best to get rid of critical voices from the previous administration, and like in many countries it issued a diktat firing Bakhtari shortly after capturing Kabul. But Austria still recognises her accreditation, and so she continues to represent the interests of Afghan nationals in the country. 'I am not taking orders from them – Taliban men,' she says. 'My legitimacy is not coming from the Taliban approval. Whatever they say, whatever their rule, it is their problem. Not mine. I don't have to accept their words because they have not been recognised within and outside of Afghanistan. They do not even have legitimacy among our own people.' Over the past four years Taliban representatives have steadily taken over more and more missions around the world, with Norway the latest European nation to accept an appointee from the group last month. India held out until the tenure of the last Afghan ambassador reached its time limit, and then quietly ushered in an official agreeable to the Taliban in late 2023. And the Afghan embassy in the UK was closed in September 2024, at the request of the British government, after the Taliban sacked all its staff. Asked whether it is inevitable that foreign governments will be forced to deal with the Taliban as Afghanistan's de facto rulers, Bakhtari is adamant. 'Let's forget the fact that the Taliban have been a terrorist group and put it aside, because right now the international community wants everyone to forget this,' she says, 'What about their policies today? Not 20 years back – let's concentrate on the past four years – forgetting their suicide attacks and atrocities. What have the Taliban done for the prosperity and welfare of Afghans? Jobs? Respected basic human rights? Forget about girls' education for a second. What about boys' education? What are our boys studying?' the ambassador asks. 'They do not have proper education or educated teachers. The Taliban has long altered the curriculum and is teaching regressive subjects to millions of Afghan boys who earlier studied under working Afghan women. So yeah, I am not taking orders from them who are yet to be recognised by even one authority,' she says. Though Bakhtari is the only female Afghan ambassador still standing, she is not alone as a woman working through diplomatic channels for the interests of the old Afghan republic. At the Herat Security Dialogue in Madrid, The Independent also met Nigara Mirdad, deputy head of mission at the now shut-down embassy of Afghanistan in Poland. Mirdad was in hospital in September last year with her 11-year-old daughter, who has diabetes and needed insulin, when the ambassador informed her that their Warsaw mission was being closed. She says she tried to fight back but in vain, and without any funds coming in from Kabul, she appealed to the diplomatic missions in Canada, Germany and the UK to help her pay for gas in the bitter sub-zero Polish winter. She recalls how it felt when she watched TV coverage of the Taliban sweeping Kabul in 2021. 'I didn't eat for days and the tears wouldn't stop rolling down my face,' she says. Both Mirdad and Bakhtari knew what was coming for Afghan women under Taliban rule – the same horror they endured as young women in their early 20s. In 1996 when she was just 12 years old, Mirdad recalls, Taliban militants entered the Panjshir valley and her neighbourhood prepared to fight. 'People said girls and women should be killed and thrown in the rivers to prevent the Taliban from touching them and the Afghan men should go and fight the Taliban. And from that time, it stayed in my mind – if the Taliban comes closer, me and the women of my family will be killed and thrown in the river,' she says. Like Bakhtari, she has received threats from the Taliban in recent years. 'I received many messages from the Taliban supporters and even the spokesperson of the Taliban's interior affairs ministry after they came to power. He said: 'Okay, you wait when we take the all the embassies in Europe, we will see you',' she says. Bakhtari says women like them are seen by the Taliban as a 'threat to their control'. 'They hate women. [They] fear that educated and empowered women will confront them and the structures of oppression they have built. With education, with empowerment and with the ruling society, women will question them,' she says. She says women cannot afford to give up their country, or the idea that things can change. 'We cannot afford to lose hope,' she says. 'That is the only thing keeping millions in Afghanistan alive.'
