Biden administration botched retreat from Afghanistan. Women are still paying the price.

It’s hard to believe that in 2024, millions of women aren’t allowed to attend school past age 12, to bare their faces on the street or even to speak while in public.

Yet, that is the case for women in Afghanistan, living under the Taliban’s terror-inducing rule.

For the Biden-Harris administration, the consequences of America’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 still echo today.

Will Vice President Kamala Harris be held accountable in this year’s election for the administration’s chaotic retreat, which enabled the Taliban to seize power again? It’s doubtful.

The Taliban strip women of equal rights, dignity

Last week, Taliban rulers formally codified strict new morality policies into law, including a ban on a woman’s ability to speak and bare their faces in public.

“According to this law, the Ministry (for Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue) is obligated to promote good and forbid evil in accordance with Islamic Sharia,” the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

The new laws are set out in a 35-article document regulating every aspect of Afghans’ lives. Article 13 requires that women veil their bodies and cover their faces in public and that their clothes cannot be form-fitting or short. Women are also banned from singing, reciting or reading aloud in public. They also cannot look at men who they are not related to by blood or marriage.

The rules affect men, too. All men must grow beards, and no one can play music in their cars.

The media also must abide by sharia law; the publication of images containing living beings is now banned.

Penalties for violations include “warnings of divine punishment, verbal threats, confiscation of property, detention for one hour to three days in public jails, and any other punishment deemed appropriate.”

Where’s the outcry from women in America?

Afghan women have long endured abuse at the hands of the Taliban, who first seized full control of the country in 1996. But after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, American and allied forces pushed the Taliban from power.

That set off two decades of war that ended with the Afghan government’s collapse and the Taliban’s return to rule in 2021, soon after President Joe Biden ordered U.S. forces to abandon the country.

Despite these atrocities, there has been little outcry recently from women’s groups in America, where gender parity has made extraordinary progress in the past few decades. Their silence about the suffering of Afghan women is stunning.

At the Democratic National Convention last week, a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic was on site to offer abortion pills to women and vasectomies for men. Though Planned Parenthood released a statement on Israel and Gaza in December, my search on the organization’s website for a statement on Afghanistan or the Taliban turned up zero results.

While Afghanistan may seem far from the United States, that distance should not encourage silence. In fact, it is because women in America enjoy so many rights that we should be the first to speak in defense of fellow women stripped of basic human rights by a radical regime.

Biden, along with Harris, initiated a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans when a bomb explode near the Kabul airport.

The disorganized exit meant that the U.S. military abandoned up to 200 U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies to oppression under Taliban rule.

During Harris’ DNC acceptance speech Thursday night, the Democratic presidential nominee left out any mention of the botched withdrawal and Afghanistan’s ongoing suffering. She did claim that her administration would be pro-military and tough on tyrants. How could she be tough on tyrants but silent about the Taliban?

Before America’s sudden exit, Afghan women were able to attend schools and universities and even hold elected office. Now, they face terrible oppression that denies them basic human dignity.

Harris should be held accountable for America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and for the devastating cruelty the administration’s choices unleashed.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids.