Author: Javaria Ahmad
After a 20-year long occupation, the United States decided to fully withdraw its troops from the country, allowing the Taliban to refill the power vacuum. In the past two weeks alone, the Taliban have reassumed control of two-thirds of the country, including the major cities of Herat, Faryab, and Lashkar Gah. Following President Ashraf Ghani’s sudden departure, the city of Kabul swiveled right into the hands of the Taliban, who now enjoy unhindered access to the Presidential Palace. While the US is rushing to safely evacuate American officials and diplomats from Taliban-controlled Kabul, local citizens have no choice but to precariously cling to overcrowded airplanes in a desperate bid to flee the country, only to fall to their deaths. The USA’s war in Afghanistan has ended in the same way it had started 20 years ago: with the Taliban in control.
While in power 20 years ago, the Taliban enforced stringent laws that prohibited women from working outside, seeking education after the age of eight, and being seen in public unveiled and without a male guardian. Moreover, young girls were forced into marriages to encourage chastity, not allowed to appear on television or radio, and often deprived of adequate medical services because the Taliban deemed it inappropriate for women to be treated by na-mehram male doctors. Defying these laws entailed swift and harsh punishments which, for the sadistic pleasure of the Taliban or to teach a cautionary lesson, were meted out publicly, before a crowd of petrified spectators. While much has changed in the last twenty years, the Taliban most certainly have not, and the recent takeover threatens to once again relegate the women to the sidelines.
As an extremist and militant Islamist group, the Taliban harbor primitively misogynistic views on women and their involvement in the public sphere. In just a few days of their return to power, they have started whitewashing the pictures of female models outside beauty parlors and jewelry shops. The erasure of the visuals of the female form from the public domain is symbolic of the physical erasure of women from the social sphere that the Taliban takeover foreshadows. According to reports, teachers have started to bid farewell to their female students in schools and universities as education for women is being forbidden in many areas. Working women are being expelled from workplaces to be replaced by their male relatives. Furthermore, the mandatory observance of purdah also reneges on a right that Afghan women have earned after years of struggle: the right to choose for themselves and their bodies. Forced marriages are also expunging on the women’s right to decide for themselves as unmarried girls between the ages of 15 and 45 are being coerced into matrimonial arrangements with Taliban soldiers, confining them to a life of servitude, submission, and marital rape. Numerous Afghan women are losing sleep over the horrors that await them under the new regime; horrors that some of them have already countenanced once, years ago.
“I did not expect that we would be deprived of all our basic rights again and travel back to 20 years ago. That after 20 years of fighting for our rights and freedom, we should be hunting for burqas and hiding our identity.”
“Women in Afghanistan are the most at -danger or most at-risk population of the country… those who [have been] upset with women becoming powerful in the last 20 years.”
“I stay up late at night, sometimes till one or two in the morning, worrying about what will happen. I am afraid that because I am rejecting the burqa, soon I will have to stay at home, and I will lose my independence and freedom.”
These statements taken from The Guardian and NBC News reflect the fear and apprehensions that have been paralyzing Afghan women since the USA abandoned the country. Although the Taliban have assured that their assumption of power will be peaceful, people who are aware of the Taliban’s previous history in Afghanistan are desperate to flee the country in fear of their retribution. Many women have gone into hiding, lamenting the fate that awaits them now. From concealing diplomas, certificates, and books in their houses to buying burqas, Afghan women and girls now prepare for a life that they had worked so hard to shirk off.
In these difficult times, it is important to speak up on the matter. In order to help, you can donate to @AfghanAidHQ emergency relief fund or @rescueorg.