What the Taliban’s Return Means for Afghan Women
By Erin Spellman
In the wee hours of the morning, Afghan woman Fawzia Koofi and her husband, Hamid, received a knock on the door from a group of Taliban officials. The operatives demanded Hamid come with them, without specifying any legitimate charges against him. Koofi begrudgingly threw on her burqa to avoid public lashings for immodesty, and got in the car with a male taxi driver, an act that was illegal under Taliban rule. As they passed through checkpoints on the way to the prison, Fawzia Koofi lied that she was related to the taxi driver to avoid arrest herself. This was the reality for millions of Afghan women under the tyranny of the Taliban.
Over the weekend, Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban. Since President Joe Biden announced in April his decision to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops by the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the nightmare scenario many predicted has come to fruition. The stunning scenes of the evacuation of the U.S. embassy and the airport tarmac in Kabul have taken the media by storm. Now that the Taliban has conquered Afghanistan once more, it’s the nation’s women who have most to fear.
The radical Islamic fundamentalist organization referred to as the Taliban emerged in the mid-1990s under the leadership of Mujahid commander, Mohammad Omar. Composed of educated Pashtun Afghans, the group’s message and vision, promising order and stability, took root in the country ravaged by decades of conflict and bloodshed.
As the Taliban vowed to end the violence, the allure of peace overshadowed the specter of a society bound by sharia law, the strict moral code the group enforced for citizens. Under the sharia framework, women were forbidden from receiving an education, working outside of the home, or leaving the home without a male guardian. Women were required to wear long thick burqas in public, leaving them unidentifiable. Many forms of entertainment, including music, dancing, and other recreational activities, were banned.
The only professions women could pursue were in healthcare, since male doctors were prohibited from seeing female patients. Roads were crowded with widows, who lost their husbands and sons in the civil war, whose only means of survival was to beg. Ghazi Stadium in Kabul, where Afghans could once attend football matches, became a venue for public physical punishments and executions for women found guilty of violating the sharia law.
Using twisted logic to justify its oppression of women, the Taliban often argued that the restrictions it imposed were to revere and protect women. During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban perpetrated atrocities on Afghan citizens that violated every international norm and standard of human rights. In a tactic called the scorched earth policy, the Taliban destroyed and burned acres of crops and resources, displacing thousands of Afghans and rendering their land barren.
The group intentionally denied food supplies from the United Nations, keeping the population starved and deprived of life’s necessities. Most notoriously, the Taliban ran an extensive human trafficking network. Women from minority groups defeated by the Taliban were abducted and forced into marriages with Taliban fighters. According to former Kabul police chief Ahmad Jan in 2003, women were sold and eventually “dishonored and discarded.”
After the American invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, women were liberated, opening doors and opportunities for them to play vital roles in the economy. In less than two decades after her husband was mysteriously imprisoned, Fawzia Koofi became a Member of Parliament, qualifying to run for president of Afghanistan.
In 2004, the Afghan Constitution ensured that “citizens of Afghanistan, men and women, have equal rights and duties before the law.” In 2009, Afghanistan adopted the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law. As of 2018, 83 percent of girls were enrolled in school in Afghanistan, a stunning statistic compared to the zero percent of girls who were enrolled in school under the Taliban in 2000.
Under President Donald Trump, the plan to withdraw from Afghanistan by May of this year was based upon a set of conditions. The Biden administration completely scrapped this plan and pushed their unconditional withdrawal deadline to September 11th 2021 for purely political reasons. Since the Taliban began advancing again, gradually toppling towns and provincial capitals, nearly one million people have been displaced in Afghanistan, 70 percent of whom are women and children. It has only taken the Taliban just over one week to gain control over the whole country.
The progress that Afghanistan’s women secured over the past two decades has practically disappeared overnight. Women have been sent home from work, girls have been released from schools, and women from captured villages have been forced to marry unwed fighters.
Afghanistan’s first female mayor, Zarifa Ghafari and other women’s rights advocates like her have been stranded in the country. At 27 years old, she rose to prominence by becoming the youngest and first female mayor in Afghanistan. Facing risk of assassination by the Taliban, Ghafari has no choice but to remain in Kabul, while many other senior members of the government are able to escape.
Since it ousted the Afghan regime, the Taliban, posing as a legitimate governing body, has promised that “no one’s life, property, and dignity will be harmed and the lives of the citizens of Kabul will be at risk.” Of course, this has proven false as the Taliban are already conducting revenge killings and other terrorist tactics in the parts of Afghanistan it has seized. Pashtana Durrani, the executive director of the pro-education non-profit, LEARN, warned that “girls, women in my family, they have been crying over everything that has been happening...men taking over streets, them celebrating their victories but at the same time, us losing our identity.”
What does the future hold for Afghan women? Fawzia Koofi fears that the future for these women is “dark.” However, she argues that “these military extremist groups are not afraid of superpowers or B52 or B56 [American bombers], but they are afraid of women” due to the large platforms and determination that many Afghan women now have after experiencing liberty. Majbooba Seraj, the founder of Afghan Women’s Network argues that “what’s happening in Afghanistan today will put this country 200 years back.”
As two-thirds of the population are under the age of thirty, the majority of Afghani women have been fortunate enough to not have lived under Taliban control. They have not been subject to harsh Sharia Law mandates such as mandatory burqas or brutal penalties for trivial infractions, such as public beheadings. Although the Taliban promises that things will be different for women this time around, they have presented absolutely no evidence that they have women’s best interests in mind. Their track record with human rights is no consolation to the Afghan women left behind, who now prepare for the Taliban’s second reign of terror.
Kristen Rouse, a Veteran who served three tours in Afghanistan, brings awareness to the fact that many of our female allies trapped in Kabul are feeling a sense of betrayal as they are forced back into brutal situations such as forced marriage with Taliban soldiers. Many members of the American media seem to misunderstand the gravity of the situation. CNN reporter Clarissa Ward, who wore a burqa on the streets of Kabul Monday as a so-called sign of liberation and women’s empowerment, claims that the Taliban are “just chanting ‘Death to America’, but they seem friendly at the same time”. Additionally, MSNBC gave airtime to the Taliban as reporter Ayman Mohyeldin interviewed Taliban Spokesman Suhail Shaheen who claimed that the reports of targeted killings and forced marriages in Afghanistan are “not Taliban.” Additionally, Facebook and Twitter have not ruled out allowing the Taliban to control the accounts that were previously run by Afghanistan’s democratically elected government.
British statesman Winston Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” As the looming threat of the Taliban once again becomes a reality, Afghani women will be the true victims, and we must keep them in our prayers.
Photo via Old Afghanistan
