The New-Old Afghanistan

A curtain divides these students at a private university in Kabul. Gender separation is now the official policy here — and that is likely to spread. "Co-education contradicts the principles of Islam as well as national values, customs and traditions,” said Abdul Baghi Hakkani, the incoming minister for higher education, in Kabul.

"It is becoming really, really troublesome. … Is this the stage where the girls are going to be forgotten?"

"I know they don’t believe in giving explanations, but explanations are very important."

"We have to talk. We have to find a middle ground."

Mabouba Suraj, head, Afghan Women’s Network

 

"[t is] the right of women to work, learn and participate in politics on the national and international stage."

"Unfortunately, in the current Taliban Islamic Emirate government there is no space in the Cabinet." 

"By closing the women’s ministry it shows they have no plans in the future to give women their rights or a chance to serve in the government and participate in other affairs."

Sara Seerat, former advisor, Afghan Women's Affairs Ministry

 

By stealth, if not exactly yet official, Afghanistan's women's ministry is no more. "I am the only breadwinner in my family", said an employee of the ministry, now locked out of employment, since the government ministry for which she worked is no longer in operation. "When there is no ministry, what should an Afghan woman do?", she said plaintively. Well, it would appear, nothing, nothing an Afghan woman can do, but heed the direct orders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: stay home, mind the kitchen, look after the children, be prepared at all times to satisfy her husband's urgent needs. No husband? They'll find one for her.

 

Workers were assigned the job of replacing the women's ministry sign with those of the Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. A ministry absolutely integral to the support of sharia law. Henceforth women are to be fully veiled, garbed face-to-foot in black burqas. They must not show their faces, their elbows, their wrists, their ankles to a male other than their husbands. They must not venture out in public other than in the stewardship accompaniment of a male family member.

 

Should they attempt to do otherwise, representatives of the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice will immediately act to correct such behaviour. Public floggings are in order, as they were between 1996 and 2021. Those not then old enough to remember those days will swiftly become familiar with such penalties. The women who had been employed in the former women's ministry will have understood that something dire was imminent. They had been attempting to enter their workplace for seeks. And informed to return home.

 

On Thursday the building gates were finally locked. There was no direct response from the usual Taliban spokesmen the following day, other than a senior Taliban leader having proclaimed earlier in the week that women would not be permitted to work alongside men in government ministries. A statement not open to interpretation, other than what it represents as a bald directive of Taliban sharia-led obligations all must obey. This is the new Afghanistan -- all over again.

 

Getty Images

 

In the years before the U.S.-led NATO mission to Afghanistan the previous Taliban iteration saw its Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice exercising its mandate as moral police tasked with enforcing the Taliban sharia including a strict dress code. It was anything but uncommon to see women being struck for dress code infractions, in public. Nor were public floggings and public executions infrequent. A very similar ministry exists in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with men policing the 'morals' of women's behaviour and garb; they have much in common.

It was a time when girls were denied the opportunity to attend school. Women were not permitted to work outside the home, nor were they allowed to attend university. The new Taliban ministry of education has stated that schools meant specifically for boys would reopen, while some schools still operate where girls up to the sixth grade were in attendance. Women still have gone out to university classes, with strict enforcement of physical separation from men, in split classes. Girls' high schools, however have been shuttered.

The Taliban explain much of this as owing to the still-unsettled security situation; not that they have issued an order for schools to close, since their takeover. Simply that many activities specifically meant for women and girls were not yet feasible. "All teachers and male students should attend school", said the statement, with state and private schools at primary and secondary levels along with official madrassas (religious schools) opening.

 

Photos and videos emerging from Afghanistan show bustling activity returning to the streets of cities — as at this restaurant in Herat, where customers are being welcomed back. But there is one conspicuous difference from before: At the tables are men and men alone, often wearing the traditional knee-long tunic. Women have become a rarity in the cityscape.