With Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, women face losing 20 years of hard-gained freedoms — to be replaced with anxiety, fear and death.
Taliban rulers claim they will allow Afghan women to continue to work and study. “We have got frameworks, of course,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said last week. “Women are going to be very active in society but within the framework of Islam.”
Yet Afghan women see their future very differently. Some got out, but millions across all academic and professional backgrounds are questioning their existence under Taliban leadership.
I have communicated with dozens of women in my former home country who say they cannot live under sharia law. They describe their current experience in fearful, scary and uncertain terms.
Fakhria*, a self-employed 23-year-old from Mazar-i-Sharif, says women have become less visible and the city “has a completely masculine face”.
“It is a ghost town and women have more fear and anxiety even with full Islamic cover,” Fakhria said. “The Taliban told women at a news conference to have an Islamic outfit. According to their sharia, it means to wear a radical Islamist outfit including covering our hands and face. This compulsion is not acceptable to us. In addition, we will not be allowed to walk alone down the street without a male partner. We cannot bear such things.”
Lida*, a government employee from Ghazni, says it is “impossible to live under sharia law”, but there is no choice for women who remain in Afghanistan.
“They misuse Islamic law to force women to wear Burqa,” Lida said. “They want to imprison the thoughts of women in a dark and ignorant frame. I am totally against it. Women are human and they will never sacrifice their freedom of choice under this radical regime.”
Other women have expressed similar fears.
In Kapisa, the most densely populated province outside Kabul, an 18-year-old student tells me she desperately feared for her future. She says women are no longer allowed to go to school in her area. Before the Taliban, women had all kinds of freedom, but now those freedoms are gone.
“The existence of women today within the city is invisible,” she said. “Islam never said to hit and imprison women … Life under the Taliban government is hell.”
A university student in Kabul tells me the Taliban’s PR spin on education and employment “is a lie” and the role of women “will be reversed back to 1996”. Another woman, a 26-year-old university graduate, says “it is better to die” than accept life under the Taliban’s “radical” sharia law.
Despite their educational, professional and geographical differences, the one thing that bonds these women is distrust of the Taliban’s rebranding as a government that tolerates women.
“They are telling lies and never believable,” said Yusra*, a school lecturer from Badakhshan. “As time passes, you will be shocked by their true faces.” Another says that whatever the Taliban say at press conferences, it is clear women “are the second sex and slaves of men”.
Hasiba Atakpal, a reporter from TOLOnews tweeted that she was hopeful after Mujahid’s press conference but when the Taliban took her camera, hit her colleague and fired shots into the air, it became clear “there is a gap between action and words”.
As Afghan women are forced deeper into a dangerous, exhausting and irreversible struggle, some are even losing their faith.
“My parents and I are Muslim, but we cannot fix today’s issues with radical Islam,” said the university student from Kabul. “If this is the order of things, I am considering myself a non-Muslim.”
Yet many women are determined to resist. Crystal Bayat, a protest leader who organised a rally on Afghanistan’s Independence Day, told The New York Times that for the past 19 years she has been studying but now all her dreams have died.
“Twenty years of changes will be lost under the Taliban’s hand,” she said. “I haven’t seen Taliban in my whole life … If they shoot me, ’til the time they shoot, I will strive and I will seek my goals. I will not let them deprive [me of] my fundamental rights.”
* Names are pseudonyms, for safety reasons.
Sakina Amani is an Afghan journalist who moved from Kabul to Melbourne in 2020. Find her on Twitter @SakinaAmani.
All cults and religions are MAN made and that is why women are their targets when it comes to discrimination and abuse. It will never change.
All religions are inherently misogynistic. We’re constantly told we need to be tolerant of the intolerant. The Taliban seems to be where people draw the line.
Oh Islam? That’s fine! I’m tolerant! Yay multicultural! Oh, you’re forcing women to disappear? I guess I draw the line there.
We need to draw a tighter line on these wingnuts. Don’t wait until it gets to the Taliban point before you speak up. That goes for the white suburban pentecostal loonies as well as religions like Islam. Equal opportunity dislike of women hating religions.
Just curious are there any black Pentacostal loonies?.
In America most likely.
There are, but they don’t have the same level of political power or influence so I don’t think about them as much. They are not the Prime Minister.
How would you judge this character’s status? I could make some very specific remarks but I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-nsw-update-police-break-up-blacktown-church-gathering/55e27187-190b-4a1d-8ce0-8a193875ce1a
It seems that the N.S.W. Government was not impressed with his performance. The church and the attendees were all fined for an illegal gathering.
I don’t like any religion, of any color or culture. However, when it comes to evangelicals it is white evangelicals who pose the greatest threat to my life in the West. I’m not giving POC evangelicals a pass, just saying you don’t seem them in public life as much as the bloc that is white clappy people.
All religions and denominations are icky but some are more relevant than others.
In photos or Iraq in the 70s and Kabul in the 60s before the American wars there are lots of young people dressed and with cars like in the West. Radical Islam has been used and greatly strengthened by the West.
What is happening in Afghanistan is really a monumental tragedy. I really feel for those Afghans, particularly the females who are trying to extricate themselves for the extremist slime pit of religion that they see in their path. However the more that I think about it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that it is up to the Afghans to sort out their own mess. If they cannot get their act together after 20 years of western intervention then how long would it take?
Clearly Islam is at war with itself (in Afghanistan as well as in numerous other areas) and it is best if we stay well clear of the conflict.
I agree. I feel terrible for the people who don’t want to live like that, but are we meant to maintain a forever standing presence in the country? At some point these countries and groups need to sort themselves out. We should still help with refugee spots and resources etc but we can’t just babysit these places forever. It’s not like we haven’t given it a really good go.
Those poor Afghan women. Interpreting those Taliban leader words “live within Islam framework” sounds like “you are all going to be jihad brides, whether you like it or not. You will wear the burka, breed and cook for us men is what it unfortunately means. The Taliban hasn’t changed. You only have to see the size of that desperate crowd trying to get out of Kabul to see what the population thinks of the taliban.
Every time I see an Afghani woman interviewed about loosing her rights and freedoms I think that maybe if they had picked up a weapon and stood beside their brothers to fight the Taliban they would have kept them. You can’t complain if your not willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. That may have encouraged the army to stay “on the line” as well. Nothing like having your women next to you. Seemed to work perfectly for the Kurds, where the women fought beside the men. They defeated ISIS I am sure.
Yes but the Kurds have the world on their side. They have the US and have been supplied with Russian military hardware for decades when they were fighting the Turkish government in trying to seek a Kurdish State. I’m afraid it was a unanimous decision to get rid off IS. They represent a strategic threat and an existential threat to every State with the exception of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and may have community support in places like Turkey, Iraq, Syria, the UAE and Pakistan. No one wants them. Not China, Russia or the US. Nor the UK, Australia, Indonesia. But the Taliban have managed to elicit consistent community support particularly among the Pashtun community in Afghanistan and have overt and covert support from Pakistan including its government and politicians. Its too simple to put the onus on women in an undeveloped, war torn country and a failed state to come to the party when they are busy raising children, getting an education, working and just bloody well surviving. Also bear in mind 66,000 Afghan Army personnel have died in the 2 decade struggle against the Taliban. Short of a genocide against the Pashtuns to even up the numbers of ethnic groups likely to oppose the Taliban, it is best to keep the focus on retrieving those Afghans who assisted Australia in any capacity to safe passage to Australia for resettlement. I don’t think it is any one’s interest to re-enter Afghanistan to embark on another crusade to ‘liberate’ women who are incapable in their culture and politics to liberate themselves.
Eritrean women fought, and often led, in the liberation war against Ethiopia in the 80s, culminating in succession in 1993.
Unfortunately they did not succeed in liberating themselves from the regime of their brother, fathers & sundry males in the new nation.