Women’s rights under threat in Taliban-run Afghanistan

In late March, the Taliban did a U-turn on their promise to open schools for girls, saying schools would remain shut indefinitely and blaming a lack of teachers and school uniform issues. Do you think Taliban attitudes towards girls’ education have changed since they were last in power or were their promises to open schools aimed at an international audience?

I think the Taliban were tricking the international community. These were the words the international community wanted to hear, because they needed an excuse to give the Taliban money and an international platform.

Firstly, girls and boys are segregated after year five in Afghan schools, there is no co-education from year five onwards. There are also boys’ schools and girls’ schools from year one. The only area where co-education exists is higher education, at university level. Segregation of the universities was imposed in the early weeks of Taliban control.

Secondly, in Afghanistan there are at least ten provinces with a hot climate where schools start in winter rather than spring. During the talks in Oslo in January, the international community had an opportunity to ask the Taliban to announce that girls in these provinces can go to back school immediately, not at the end of March. But they failed to do that. More importantly, they also failed to say they will only meet with the Taliban if all women can return to work as of tomorrow, as of next week. Oslo was one of the best opportunities to push for maintaining human rights, particularly the right to education and right to work. It is not enough for a woman to just get an education and then go and sit at home. You get an education because you want to move forward, you want to be part of society and part of the country’s economic, social, and political development.

The international community seem to want to believe the Taliban, regardless of evidence that they are not abiding by their commitments and assurances.

There have been reports of female activists being targeted and disappearing following recent protests. Some human rights campaigners fear this is the start of a new phase of repression under the Taliban. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the Taliban showed some initial restraint and will now start enforcing their rules more harshly?

There have been many disappearances ever since the Taliban took power but often these cases are not reported because family members are scared it could have consequences for the person who has disappeared. There have also been attacks on media, human rights defenders, government entities, hospitals, universities, and schools.

At the same time, I believe the reason they have not shown their true colours is because they want to earn international legitimacy. Now we have seen female protesters, female civil servants, and policewomen go missing, as well as male journalists. There are more than a dozen documented cases of civil society activists and journalists who have been abducted and never seen again. When it comes to former government employees or members of the National Security Forces, that number reaches hundreds or maybe thousands. Extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances are happening on daily basis.

But I think their strategy worked and the Norway summit is evidence of that. Unfortunately, they were given a platform despite the fact almost half their cabinet members are on the EU terrorism sanctions list.

After Oslo, we first saw the U-turn on girls’ education and following that an order that all women must cover their faces in public. This is the true face of the Taliban we are seeing.

There is now a whole generation of young women in Afghanistan who don’t remember life under the Taliban in the 1990s. How do you think their experiences differ from those women who have experienced this kind of repression before?

A lot of Afghan women – and men – have not experienced life under the Taliban before, they were too young to remember or not even born yet. For them, after years of having access to almost all their fundamental rights and freedoms, it is unbearable to see everything suddenly taken away. If you look at who is protesting, fighting for their rights, most of them are young women and girls under the age of 30. The difference is they have tasted freedom. For our generation, we came out of communism and fell into a civil war, which was followed by the Taliban. But this generation didn’t go through all that, they experienced freedom and rights, everything they could enjoy in a country like Afghanistan.

Even in areas that were under Taliban control, such as the south and east of the country, where girls faced security threats while trying to access to education, this did not stop families from sending their daughters to school. For example, I know of a father in Khost province who walked several kilometers every day to take his daughters to school and bring them back home. And this case is by no means unique, it happened in even the most dangerous provinces such as Helmand and Kunduz.

While improved access to phones and the internet, along with the emergence of social media, have helped close the gap between rural and urban areas, families in remote provinces often sent their daughters and sons to study in larger cities such as Kabul, Herat or Jalalabad. In some instances, entire families would relocate to larger cities to support their daughters’ higher education dreams. And suddenly, all those dreams, rights and freedoms have been taken away from them. Even their basic right to access education and have employment, to be able to contribute.

The economic situation in Afghanistan is dire and the country faces a humanitarian disaster. Do you think that the measures taken by the international community following the Taliban takeover, such as withholding aid, is likely to have any effect on the Taliban’s actions? How has the economic collapse affected women?

In any society where there is an economic or humanitarian crisis, a political crisis or conflict, it always impacts women and girls – women and children – much more than other members of society. While the economic crisis puts some pressure on the shoulders of the Taliban, it is not to the extent that they would bow to the demands of Afghan people in return for humanitarian aid. At the end of the day, the Taliban will not starve. For example, they are forcing people to pay them Zakat, which is part of Islamic taxation. The Taliban don’t care about the Afghan population. If they cared, why have they put people in this situation?

And the impact is on women and children, on the most vulnerable segments of society. More than one million people are internally displaced and there are many Afghan refugees who are now returning, so many women are no longer able to work, men are not able to work. Either they have been fired by the Taliban or the organizations they were working with have dissolved. For people who were working for the international NGOs, that source of livelihood is no longer there. But is this going to affect the Taliban? No.

How can we ensure that the focus on women’s rights in Afghanistan is viewed and defended as part of human rights in its totality? It seems that the Taliban have been pushing a narrative that portrays women’s rights as something Western and not applicable to the indigenous Afghan culture.

This view was expressed by former Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan. This is sad to see because women play such an active role in all segments of Pakistani society. Pakistan had a female prime minister and has appointed a woman to the Supreme Court. But when it comes to Afghanistan and the Taliban, Pakistan says this is not part of Afghan tradition. What makes Afghans different from people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or any other part of the world? The only thing that makes Afghanistan different is that, with the support of Pakistan, it is ruled by a group that does not believe in women’s rights or any human rights and human dignity for that matter.

The Taliban uses the issue of women’s rights to bargain with the international community. But while the Taliban impose harsh restrictions on the rights of women and girls, Afghan religious scholars, including the Ulema Council, are speaking out against such policies, including supporting girls’ right to education.

Over the past 20 years, apart from the Taliban, who would you say are responsible for abuses of human rights and women’s rights?

All parties to the conflict are responsible for human rights abuses. The US, the UK, and the other NATO member states were part of the conflict, their bombing killed civilians. Especially the US which detained people for years without going through the due process, without pressing any charges. Acts of torture, extrajudicial killings and so many other atrocities have happened in Afghanistan in the past 20 years. But we have also made so much progress in Afghan society: thousands of schools were built, millions of children returned to school – girls and boys – women’s political participation increased, we had freedom of media and freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, all these achievements have been challenged by those who were part of the conflict, particularly the Taliban. There have been attacks on media, schools, universities, hospitals, civil servants, human rights activists, journalists, and media entities. The Taliban are saying that since they took power, security in Afghanistan is phenomenal. But they were the source of that insecurity. And there is still insecurity now – criminality, abductions, and kidnappings. Because people are hungry.

What could the international community have done differently to help safeguard the rights of women leading up to the withdrawal? And what can they do to help now?

In terms of safeguarding women’s rights, the international community have helped us a lot over the past 20 years and what we have achieved would not have been possible without their support. I think what went wrong is they went along with the strategy of [US Special Envoy to Afghanistan] Zalmay Khalilzad of how to deal with the Taliban. Today’s situation is a result of his failed peace process, things could have been very different if the US did not push for unconditionality in the deal with the Taliban. They released thousands of Taliban prisoners, which fuelled the insurgency even further, they failed to deescalate the violence and attacks and they failed to hold the Taliban to account. Until the very last minute, the Taliban showed zero commitment to the peace process and zero willingness to make any progress. And there was another opportunity at the summit in Norway earlier this year, but unfortunately the international community failed to seize that opportunity.

As you reflect on the time that has passed since the Taliban swept to power last year, do you feel hopeful for the future of Afghanistan? And what gives you hope?

I had a lot of hope until the Norway summit. I now have very little hope that things will change although this may sound awful. My only hope was the international community and the countries that once came and bombed Afghanistan and Iraq because there was no democracy and supported Syrian fighters because there was no democracy. Now they are allying themselves and getting too comfortable with what I strongly believe should be seen as a terrorist group. I have lost my faith in the international community and the people who were selling us the idea that they stand for democracy and human rights.