Taliban revels in its male-dominated society, while women languish under house arrest or in jail for daring to defy Taliban decrees.
The human rights abuses of the Taliban and re-establishment of gender apartheid in Afghanistan have largely been met with silence by the international community. A trend of normalization of the regime has begun to emerge in the media and in international assessments.
Recently, The Washington Post ran an article titled “Taliban vowed to change Kabul. The city may be starting to change the Taliban,” which described a Taliban enthralled with shopping, learning English and studying abroad. A photo of Taliban enjoying a picnic accompanies the article, but neglects to mention that women are now forbidden from going to the park or anywhere else. Taliban revels in its male-dominated society, while women languish under house arrest or in jail for daring to defy Taliban decrees.
This normalization of the Taliban is devastating to the women and girls of Afghanistan, and portends danger to the rest of the world where attacks on women’s rights have intensified.
The Taliban that now rules Afghanistan is the same extremist entity that revoked the basic human rights of Afghanistan’s women and girls and minorities when they were last in power in the 1990s. And now, they have done it again. I didn’t think that I would see history repeat itself in my country twice within my lifetime, but it has.
In Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan erased in a few weeks the progress made over two decades, particularly in women’s rights and democratic institutions.
- The Taliban turned the Ministry of Women’s Affairs into the Ministry of Vice and Virtue, a hateful place in charge of the enforcement of the Taliban’s edicts that targeted mostly women and girls and Hazara and Tajik ethnic minority groups.
- The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and all other mechanisms for the protection of women’s rights were abolished.
- The regime issued more than 100 orders banning women and girls from schools above sixth grade, work and going outside unaccompanied by a male relative—erasing women from public life.
The Taliban regime will do whatever it can to keep itself in power. The misery and suffering of the people mean nothing to them.
Silence at the point of a gun is not security. … Peace, security and development are not possible without respect for human rights, and all of them are not possible without women’s participation.
Some members of the international community and Taliban lobbyists have claimed that the regime has restored peace and security, reduced opium production, decreased corruption, and stabilized the economy. They also claim that the Taliban are the reality of Afghanistan, and they are accepted by the people.
Those who make claims that the Taliban has brought security to Afghanistan forget that the Taliban was the reason for insecurity in the first place. The Taliban killed, tortured, committed suicide attacks, bombed and burned girls’ schools, and took hostages for ransoms or prisoner exchange. The Taliban attacked mosques, sports clubs, funerals and any other gathering in the country.
Rather than bringing about economic security, the Taliban has denied employment to women and forbidden NGOs from hiring women to distribute aid, effectively denying female-headed households access to food and other assistance.
While there was corruption in the previous government, passports are now sold in the black market for $2,000. There are allegations of rampant corruption on mining contracts and governmental services. People are tired of widespread nepotism in the Taliban government, as well as bribes and extortion extracted through intimidation.
Those who make claims that the Taliban has brought security to Afghanistan forget that the Taliban was the reason for insecurity in the first place.
Everyone has quickly forgotten that it was Taliban who pushed farmers to cultivate opium and taxed both opium producers and smugglers to fund their fight against the government and destabilize the country. In order to appease the international community, the Taliban has now reversed course and decreed it as un-Islamic to produce opium.
Fear of the Taliban’s violence does not constitute public acceptance. How can anyone who watched the situation at the Kabul airport and saw the fear as people risked their lives to flee the Taliban during the evacuation claim that the Taliban are accepted by the people?
The targeted killing and suicide attacks against Hazaras continue with impunity, as they did under the first Taliban regime, which was marked by mass graves. Silence at the point of a gun is not security.
While I understand that there are other priorities and conflicts around the world and that each conflict requires it is own solutions, ignoring the problems in Afghanistan will not help solve the other problems, and forgetting the failures in Afghanistan will make it more likely for history to repeat itself.
We cannot forget the key lesson from Afghanistan: Peace, security and development are not possible without respect for human rights, and all of them are not possible without women’s participation.
Sustainable peace and development require an end to the culture of impunity, accountability and justice for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Afghanistan, the culture of impunity has continued and victims, particularly for victims of gender-based violence, receive no justice.
The Taliban’s embrace of some of the vestiges of modernity for men while continuing to impose brutality on women and ethnic minorities only highlights the hypocrisy and cruelty of the regime.
The international community must not be lulled into complacency.
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