Afghanistan Peace CampaignThe new law underscores that the Taliban wants to create a society of gender apartheid, in which the government silences women’s voices, robs them of their rights and makes them totally dependent on men. Afghanistan is experiencing the worst crisis of women’s rights in the world today.
After the chaotic U.S. departure from Kabul, some diplomats speculated that the Taliban would be forced to give up the harsh rule it imposed between 1996 and 2001 because it would need international recognition to avert a severe humanitarian crisis. A Taliban spokesman announced at a news conference in August 2021 that it would not have enemies, internal or external. But these soothing promises turned out to be nonsense. The Taliban of today is every bit as dehumanizing as the old.
According to the AP account of the new law, it mandates that women veil their bodies at all times in public and dictates that a face covering is essential to avoid temptations. Clothing should not be thin, tight or short. Women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims to avoid being corrupted. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting or reading in public. It is forbidden for women to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa. The law bans the playing of music, the transportation of solo female travelers and the mixing of men and women who are not related. The law also obliges passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times. Further, the law bans the publication of images of living beings, the AP reported, “threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape.”
The Taliban is destroying the country it governs. The absence of women and girls from education and commerce — aside from being a gross violation of their human rights — will harm the nation’s already floundering economy. The Taliban is afflicted with a sick and costly mysoginism. In October 2022, it banned women from choosing agriculture, mining, civil engineering, veterinary medicine and journalism as university majors, saying these subjects were “too difficult” for women. In December 2022, it banned women from public and private universities altogether.
As Sahar Fetrat and Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch have pointed out, on the day before the Taliban took over, millions of Afghan girls were in school. “More than a quarter of the members of parliament were women. Women were government ministers and judges and professors and helicopter pilots. Women were singers and painters and conceptual artists and actors. There was a girls’ orchestra.” Now all of it is gone.
The international community must not look away. Whenever there are contacts with the Taliban, other nations should include women in the delegations and speak out constantly in defense of the rights of women in Afghanistan. Overseas aid from around the world should be sent specifically to help women and girls and to keep alive the underground schools that, we are told, have been struggling to fill some of the gap caused by the Taliban’s measures.
It would help keep hope alive among these women and girls to hear the United States speak out more about their plight; many were encouraged to claim their rightful place in society during the two decades of the American presence, but now they feel lost and forgotten.
At the same time, the Taliban cannot escape accountability for this unconscionable smothering of the ambitions and daily lives of half the population. The U.S. Magnitsky Act was created to target those who grossly violate human rights; why not aim its sanctions at more the leaders of Afghanistan, who have promulgated such draconian laws?