The Sad Social Plight of Afghanistan's Women

"Our analysis shows that by 2026, the impact of leaving 1.1 million girls out of school and 100,000 women out of university correlates to an increase in early child-bearing by 45 percent and an increase in maternal mortality by up to 50 percent."

Alison Davidian, Country Representative, UN Women in Afghanistan

 

"Women like us, who fought against the Taliban and their ideology, need to be in safety."

"The Taliban shut down and destroyed everything I had in my facility [small farm where she kept animals as an animal-rights activist]. They're also against keeping pets. "

"With such routine [being virtually a prisoner in her own house] life becomes meaningless as you cannot do what you want outside  your home."

"There were days I couldn't get out of  bed [deep in depression]."

Negin, former UNICEF worker from Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

A 31-year-old woman sits by the window. She used to be an entrepreneur before the Taliban takeover. Photo: UN Women/Sayed Habib Bidell.

Up to four years ago, under the auspices of the U.S.-led international forces that dispelled Taliban rule and searched for the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the eminence grise behind the deadly New York/Washington/Pennsylvania aerial suicide attacks of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan had its re-introduction to democracy and women were freed of the restrictive talons of the Taliban imposed upon them since 1989 following the Soviet Union's departure from Afghanistan after its failed invasion. 

 

In the presence of the Western coalition -- the twenty years from 2001 to 2021 introduced the war-torn country to sweeping social and economic changes. Afghans become involved in sports which both genders participated in, as well as music concerts with male and female singers. Cafes and restaurants served both men and women, after the Taliban years when women were not seen in public, confined to their homes, and permitted outside fully covered only in the company of male relatives. 

 

Women could not be treated by male doctors, nor could they attend hospitals meant for men only. Female surgeons in women-only hospitals served in operating room surgical procedures fully garbed in burqas.Women wee lashed in public squares, stoned in sports stadiums and punished for lack of adherence should they refuse to wear the hijab.

 

In contrast to the situation that prevailed under the U.S.-led coalition, when four million girls were enrolled in school from Grades 1 to 12 in the years 2002 to 2021. There were over 80,000 female teachers in over 18,000 schools while 100,000 Afghan women attended universities. The Afghan parliament had 63 elected female MPs, fully one-third of the total legislators; female journalists and media workers challenged male-dominated officialdom. Women served as cabinet ministers, mayors, governors of provinces, while women also operated small businesses, unlike the Taliban years when women were not permitted to work outside of their homes.

 

Until the Taliban succeeded on August 15, 2021 when the Afghan capital Kabul was captured by the resurgent Taliban. Ashraf Ghani, president of the Republic of Afghanistan, backed by the Western coalition fled to the United Arab Emirates and the nation was in chaos, as the United States withdrew all its troops and diplomatic officials in a 'peace deal' with the Taliban, and the allied nations under UN auspices departed, along with the U.S., leaving the country's population in the hands of the Taliban once again.

Many Afghan women and girls are forced into unwanted marriages. Photo: UN Women/Sayed Habib Bidell.

"I cried out loud when I got engaged. I felt helpless and found myself in a situation where I had no say in my decisions. I was in my second year of university, studying law and political science, and I aspired to work in the judicial system to protect women’s rights in our country. Unfortunately, my dreams were shattered after the return of the Taliban."

"Many of my friends have faced similar fates, giving up their hopes and marrying against their will. For all girls who have been unable to complete their education, marriage is not a choice but a forced reality."

Mahnaz, from Farah, former university student 

Although the Taliban leadership promised the West, in a bid for acceptance and badly needed investment by the West in economically starved Afghanistan, for international investment, and recognition by global bodies, that women's rights would be observed, that the rights of minority groups in Afghanistan would be protected, they soon returned to the former strictures imposed upon women and girls where both could be punished for not adhering to the Taliban's dress code. 

Once again afghan women could appear in public only covered from head to toe by all-enveloping burqas which also covered their faces. Beyond Grade 6, girls could no longer attend school, and university education for women was banned. No offices and workplaces could accept female employees. Women are banned from public places, parks, and nor may they travel long distances in the absence of a male guardian. Medical training as nurses or midwives no longer is permitted.

 

Ebrahim Naroozi, AP

 

"Several times I was thinking of committing suicide because there was no hope and future for me. Women cannot laugh with one another in public. Women cannot go to parks. Women cannot work and study. Do you see hope for yourself?" Of course not, and it makes you think of ending your life."

"Whenever she sees a Talib, she [her twelve-year-old daughter] is scared of them. That's why she always stays at home and cannot go out. She is depressed all the time."

"Whenever she sees girls going to school and living freely in the West [watching television or on social media], she asks me 'Why don't I have such a life and freedom?' Her question stabs my heart like a dagger."

"The most painful part is that I can't do anything for her."

"In exchange for a peace deal with the Taliban, the world traded Afghan women and their future."

Negin, Afghan woman, Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

 

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.