Qatar FM: the Taliban are “provoking” the world and making “the situation much worse for Afghan people”

The Qatari foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, has expressed his country’s frustration at the Taliban’s recent round of restrictions on women and girls rights in Afghanistan.

Speaking to Hadley Gamble of CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Al-Thani said that the Afghan rulers’ oppression of women “were very frustrating and disappointing from our point of view.” Adding that Qatar had been trying to reach out of the group “in order to understand what are the rational behind these decisions, because we cannot see it rationalised from a religious perspective, or even cultural perspective.”