Women and girls in Afghanistan have been subject to increased curbs on their personal freedoms according to the United Nations (Picture: Reuters/Getty)

Women and girls in Afghanistan will not be able to watch the World Cup in public amid a harsh curtailing of their freedoms by the Taliban, an opposition leader visiting the UK has said.

Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front (NRF), arrived in London yesterday with a warning that the country’s rulers are ‘becoming more radicalised by the day’.

Mr Nazary said that Qatar, which is in the world’s spotlight ahead of the first game in the FIFA tournament on Sunday, should close the Taliban’s liaison office in Doha. His comments follow three UN agencies reporting in August 2022 on how women and girls in Afghanistan have had a ‘year of increasing disrespect’ since the Taliban came to power.

‘This an oppressive, terrorist group that has restrained the whole population, and specifically women,’ Mr Nazary said.

‘They don’t enjoy their rights anymore as human beings and citizens of that country. One difference from last year is how sports have lost the government support with the current terrorist group that controls the country not being for the promotion of such sport.

‘Many of the stadiums are not operating and women will not be able to watch the World Cup in public spaces as they did beforehand.’

The NRF, whose heartland is in the north-eastern Panjshir Valley, is fighting a guerilla campaign against the Taliban following the Western-backed government’s collapse in August 2021.

‘Just a few days ago the Taliban announced that women are not allowed to visit restaurants, cafes, any public places of that sort,’ Mr Nazary said.

‘They are not allowed to visit parks anymore, to use public baths, they have been announcing harsh measures, it’s happened since last year and recently it has become much more severe.’

Afghan women wearing burqas walk through a market in the north-eastern city of Fayzabad (Picture: by Omer Abrar/AFP)

The NRF is led by resistance leader Ahmad Massoud, son of famed guerilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, and controls 60% of mountainous Panjshir Province, according to Mr Nazary.

As the asymmetric fight continues, Mr Nazary told Metro.co.uk that the Taliban’s liaison office in Qatar’s capital Doha should be shut down as the self-styled Islamic emirate becomes increasingly intolerant.

‘There are many things Qatar and the international community could be doing at the moment,’ he said.

‘Their so-called office has to be closed in Doha and they have to feel the isolation, the marginalisation, in order to start changing.

‘In our perspective they are a terrorist group and so they receive their legitimacy from radical Islamism and terrorism.

‘We doubt any kind of pressure will work.

‘They are becoming more radicalised by the day and they are only exploiting these platforms for their own interests.’

Shabnam Nasimi, a former UK special advisor on Afghanistan, this week used Twitter to ask people to ‘imagine not being allowed to work, to go to school, to travel alone without a male relative’.

Ms Nasimi, who is originally from Afghanistan, told Metro.co.uk: ‘Aside from not being able to watch the World Cup football in public spaces, Afghanistan has become one of the world’s worst places to be a woman.

‘Women are restricted from working apart from some positions where the Taliban need them, such as teachers and doctors.

‘Teenage girls are banned from school, women cannot travel without a male relative and the burqa or hijab is mandatory.

The gun-toting image of Taliban fighters patrolling in Kabul reinforces accounts of the self-styled Emirate rolling back civil rights (Picture: Mohd Rasfan)

‘They have now also been banned from gyms and parks, the last places they could have gone out for exercise or to spend time with their children outside their homes. No place on earth treats women this way. We are beginning to see the complete imprisonment of women in their homes.

‘If this isn’t a time for the UN to act, then when is? In the 21st Century, the treatment of Afghan women shames the world.’

Qatar has been an intermediary between the Taliban and the outside world, including through the 2020 Doha Agreement, where the group agreed not to allow Afghan soil to be used for activities threatening the West.

However it is unlikely that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will have any visible presence in the Gulf state during the World Cup.

Hans-Jakob Schindler, director at the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based think tank, told Metro.co.uk that the Taliban will want to distance itself from what it views as a ‘debauched’ event.

Women gather on a street in Kabul to demand their rights a month after the Taliban took control of the capital (Picture: AP Photo/Wali Sabawoon)

‘The long-standing relationship between Qatar and the Taliban is not completely divorced from US foreign policy,’ he said.

‘As we know, it was under the Obama administration that the Qatar office of the Taliban was officially opened as negotiations between the US, the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan took place.

‘Qatar has maintained its embassy in Kabul and tried to get some basic infrastructure going and was first to offer flights in and out of Kabul Airport after the Western nations withdrew.

‘However I don’t think that Qatar, with all the other issues they have, will be likely to welcome a Taliban delegation to the World Cup. Nor will the Taliban have a great interest in showing up at the World Cup.

‘As moderate as they may paint themselves in Qatar, the Taliban are still a super-hardline extremist Islamist organisation which has more than a cordial relationship with al-Qaeda and there is nothing for them to win by showing up at the tournament.

‘Coming to what in their eyes is a debauched event like the World Cup, where women will be without hijabs in one example will not win them any points in Afghanistan or the wider Islamist community.’

Girls study in a secret school at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ascent to power (Picture: Daniel Leal/AFP)

The UN gave its bleak assessment of gender discrimination under Taliban rule to mark a year since the end of the West’s withdrawal in August 2021.

A report found that ‘Afghan women are now mostly restricted from working outside the home, they must cover their faces in public, and they have to be accompanied by a male chaperone when they travel’.

In October 2022, a House of Commons report found that most secondary schools remained closed to girls after the militants seized power.

The Taliban blamed a ‘shortage of female teachers and a need to reform the curriculum but there are fears this represents a permanent shift’, the authors of the research briefing found.

Extremism is another concern that has been highlighted by the NRF, which claims there are 21 terror groups active in the country.

While the Taliban is not a proscribed organisation under British law, the Haqqani Network, which has a major influence among the new rulers, has been designated as a terror group by the UK, US and UN.

There have also been reports of Isis-Khorasan and Al-Qaeda fighters regrouping during and after the allies’ departure.

At the time they came to power, the Taliban said they were ‘committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia’.

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Qatar is being called on to close the Taliban liaison office as the treatment of women is said to ‘shame the world’.