The Last Ambassador

By Natalie Halla

The Afghan ambassador in Vienna, Manizha Bakhtari, has found herself in a bizarre situation since the Taliban took power: she represents a country whose old government has fled and whose new Taliban government is not recognized internationally. Despite financial and logistical isolation, Manizha Bakhtari is defying the Taliban to continue her fight for the rights of Afghan women and girls as an ambassador. Through her ‘Daughters’ programme, she enables secret education to Afghan schoolgirls while organising political resistance against the Taliban as an ambassador. Under increasingly difficult conditions, she becomes one of the most important international spokespersons for the women of Afghanistan, true to her motto ‘peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice’.