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

 

Afghanistan's Women Under the Taliban

"There is a need for greater advocacy efforts in support of women and girls in Afghanistan."

"In terms of number and gravity, we are still having the largest humanitarian crisis globally in Afghanistan: 28 million people are in need of humanitarian help."

"It's very important to make sure that aid will be directly and effectively delivered to vulnerable people, and that the Taliban will not be able to benefit from aid, or use aid delivery as a tool for legitimization or consolidating power."

"There have been a lot of cases of this nature [lack of formal paper trails to indicate the use of international aid to line the pockets of the Taliban] in the past few months. For international NGOs that continue to work in Afghanistan, it has been a dilemma."

"According to many international experts, these repressive measures against women and girls in Afghanistan amount to a gender apartheid."

Ambassador Hassan Soroosh, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Afghanistan ambassador Hassan Soroosh and administrator Tamim Amini doing the best they can with limited resources to provide services to Afghans in Canada and the U.S.  CBC

 

Appointed Ambassador to Canada by the previous Afghan government, Ambassador Soroosh has maintained the Afghan Embassy to continue providing consular services to Afghans in Canada, while advocating for the welfare, security and safety of Afghans everywhere. He has been involved in persuading the Canadian government to lift its legal prohibitions on delivering humanitarian aid from Canada to his country.

Ambassador Soroosh has never lost hope that in time Afghanistan by some quirk of happenstance and fate will once again be a democratic country, his people released from the theocratic Islamism forced upon his country by the Taliban since they re-secured Kabul as their barbaric fiefdom in August of 2021 with the withdrawal of U.S. and international forces, ceding the country back to Taliban rule. The international community withdrew their charitable investments with the Taliban return.

 

Young girls still go to school in Afghanistan but are excluded from education beyond that  EPA

 

Humanitarian funding and the humanitarian aid given to the struggling people of Afghanistan was severely compromised when the Taliban issued one of their female-centric edicts disallowing Afghan women to work for international NGOs. A great many changes took place with the Taliban return, one of the first being a renaming of the country to reflect their rule: the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, a change unrecognized by the international community.

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has advised humanitarian groups that purchasing goods or hiring locals in Afghanistan involves the paying of taxes to the Taliban, considered under the Criminal Code of Canada as contributing to a terrorist group, which is how the Taliban are universally viewed. Afghanistan is a country in economic freefall, where humanitarian crises wrack the population, from a ruined health-care system to soaring rates of child malnutrition.

 

Afghan women attend a protest against their country's Taliban rulers, in Islamabad, Pakistan, on International Women's Day, March 8, 2023. Sami Yousafzai/CBS News

 

Ambassador Soroosh seeks a way to persuade the Canadian government to respond to his country's dire humanitarian situation, made more urgent in the wake of one of the coldest winters on record to hit the country. Under the Taliban, women and girls may no longer attend school after the primary grades. More recently universities have been placed off limits to women. Women must again as in the previous Taliban rule, be attended only in female-only hospitals and women-only medical professionals.

Woman are now barred from going to gyms and parks. Public flogging of women has been resumed for those who leave their homes absent the chaperoning presence of a male guardian. Amnesty International has urged the UN Human Rights Council to put a stop to Taliban impunity, citing "the suffocating crackdown on the rights of women and girls, and targeted executions of ethnic Hazara people".

Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada Hassan Soroosh stands outside the Embassy of The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Ottawa, July 7, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

"It requires collective international efforts in terms of putting greater pressure on the Taliban. Because it seems that the Taliban so far have not felt the real pressure to change their policies and approach."

"Politically speaking, as experience shows in the case of Afghanistan, no regime and no system can survive without embracing the will of the people."

Afghan Ambassador Hassan Soroosh

Savaging Women's Human Rights in Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have decreed that women should wear the all-covering burka in public and leave home only when necessary, a throwback to when the Taliban ruled the country between 1996 and 2001. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

"For all dignified Afghan women, wearing Hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori [head-to-toe burka] which is part of our tradition and is respectful."

"If a woman is caught without a Hijab, her mahram [male guardian] will be warned."

"The second time, the guardian will be summoned and after repeated summons, her guardian will be imprisoned for three days."

Shir Mohammad, Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice

 

"This decision contradicts numerous assurances regarding respect for and protection of all Afghans’ human rights, including those of women and girls, that had been provided to the international community by Taliban representatives during discussions and negotiations over the past decade."

"The decision six weeks ago to postpone secondary schooling for Afghan girls was widely condemned internationally, regionally, and locally. Today’s decision by the Taliban might further strain engagement with the international community."

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)

 

A burqa-clad woman and a child walk past Taliban fighters along a roadside in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

It was expected, but it's still a shock to women in Afghanistan hoping that the return of the Taliban to government rule in their country abandoned by the West to the fundamentalist Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan whose leaders promised when they took power from the West-supported government in August of 2021 that Afghan women would not be shoved back to the Stone Age as they were in the Talibans' initial iteration when they ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

 

It has now, after almost a year of rule, reneged on its promise and re-installed their original proscriptions against women appearing in public unless entirely covered but for their eyes, and in the company of a male family member. Music and dance are again disallowed. Women may no longer attend school, much less have employment outside of the home. All the stringent disallowals of the previous Taliban administration have been reintroduced.

 

This, in a country that is in a humanitarian crisis with over half the population facing malnutrition. International sanctions excluding the Taliban from major financial institutions have heavily impacted the collapsed economy. International investment dried up as soon as the Taliban returned to power. Afghan financial resources held overseas have been frozen rather than release them to the Taliban.

 

Afghan women and girls shout slogans demanding the reopening of high schools for girls during a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Education in Kabul, March 26, 2022  AFP

 

Afghanistan is once more back in the thrall of an oppressive, violent government, implementing -- as Afghan women suspected they would -- those same regressive and repressive laws targeting rights and freedoms of women. Segregation laws were brought to Herat decreeing women and men may no longer dine out in each other's company. Women must now remain at home unless it is absolutely necessary for them to venture forth at which time a male guardian must accompany them in public.

Parks are to be open to women exclusively on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with men having exclusive use of the parks on the other four days of the week. Burkas have become the preferred coverings henceforth to obscure a woman completely from public scrutiny. Only eyes are to be exposed. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is known to monitor the streets of the country looking out for any foolish enough to flout the law.

Disobedience to the new/old proscriptions will be viewed as a criminal offence. A far cry from the oleaginous statement for international consumption made by Zabiullah Mujahid when the Taliban spokesman said "our sisters, our men have the same rights" in an effort to reassure the world that the returned Taliban were now moderate and civil. It took little time however, before women were banned from working and girls prohibited from attending school beyond Grade 6.

"[Pre-Taliban Afghanistan was] a thriving cultural environment [with 3.6 million girls in school and a quarter of the seats in Parliament held by women]."

"I very much hope that very shortly we'll be able to agree on a product that expresses our collective agreement and concern about these latest developments."

Barbara Woodward, British UN Ambassador to the United Nations