Women’s Rights Under the Taliban Siege

Written by Zahra ur Rehman

This is a featured article, the name “Noor” is a pseudonym.

When the Taliban returned to power, Noor was 15 years old.

Within weeks, girls’ schools were closed. Women were barred from leaving their homes without a mahram. Sports were banned. The sheer atrocities of them ordering faces to be covered, even on mannequins in shop windows were not spared. Childhood, for Afghan girls, ended abruptly, replaced with fear, confinement, and a systematic erasure of basic rights.

Restrictions deepened as months passed. In 2022, women were banned from gyms and public spaces, an order the Taliban claimed was to prevent men and women from mixing. Female trainers disagreed, stating that women had always trained separately. 

“The Taliban are lying,” one instructor told the Associated Press anonymously, fearing reprisal. “We were training separately.”

– Al Jazeera

Under these conditions, early marriage became common. Families, fearing retaliation or poverty, married off their daughters while they still could. Many families, fearing persecution or poverty, began marrying off daughters early often as protection from Taliban fighters who sought young girls for marriage. So marrying them off early with a known relative was a safe option.

Those who continued their education did so secretly and illegally in basements, private homes, or through unstable internet connections. Online education has been the only way of pushing through education in Afghanistan for most girls and women. Young men are not as much restricted by Taliban, the only known effect on theek r education is that they are preferred to study Islamic law or sharia, in contrast with natural sciences or STEM. This has led to a medical crisis since there is next to no female operated hospital in Afghanistan. Under the Taliban rule, women are not allowed to visit a male doctor, especially the matter of child birth is considered secular. As a result, women in labour are often treated at home, unmedicated and inexperienced, eventually resulting in complications as severe as death of either the child or mother.

Afghanistan is among the worst countries in the world for deaths in childbirth, with one woman dying every two hours. Malnutrition is the underlying cause for one third of child mortality in Afghanistan.

- Claimed AlJazeera

Noor was among those who tried to hold on as her family supported her as much as they could. Eventually, she and her family fled Afghanistan and sought asylum in Iran and resumed her education. There, she encountered another Afghan woman, a displaced doctor who shared a disturbingly haunting story during her medical service in Afghanistan, the doctor said a colleague was taken by Taliban forces. Her face had been covered so she could not take in the whereabouts. Once they reached their destination , she was asked to deliver young girls ,some no older than 13 ,who arrived pregnant, giving birth to children fathered by Taliban fighters. Where the girls came from, or what became of them afterward, was never known. It is speculated though that they were smuggled from border areas of Pakistan where Taliban hold authority, or from some ethnic families living in northern Afghanistan who are not Pashtun, since Taliban carry a nationalist agenda and consider all other castes beneath them.

International media and tourist campaigns often portray Afghanistan under Taliban rule as stable and welcoming. Nelab says that image is carefully curated, usually by male travelers. According to her, activists, journalists, and those who speak out are routinely abducted or disappear. The friendliness shown to outsiders, she believes, is for display. Travel influencer “sophieetravels” visited Afghanistan and states that women are scarce in public places. Mostly are restricted to their homes, whose windows are barred by wooden posts.

Four missing Afghan women activists released: Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, Zahra Mohammadi and Mursal Ayar went missing after participating in an anti-Taliban rally, but Afghanistan’s new rulers – whose government is still not recognized by any country – had consistently denied detaining them.

-UN

Life in Iran, she says, is a little better. Afghans pay inflated prices for basic goods and services. Healthcare, education, and transportation often cost several times more for Afghan refugees than for Iranian citizens. Visa renewals are expensive, bureaucratic, and exhausting. Iran hosts about 4 million Afghan refugees but anti-Afghan sentiment is on the rise amid economic crisis in the country. There have been reports of Afghan refugees being mistreated in Iran. Last month, several clips were published online which allegedly showed refugees being beaten by Iranian border guards.

- Al Jazeera English

Now older, Noor sees education abroad as her only path forward. Securing admission, she says, is not her ambition but a hope to survive like many refugees. She hopes that a university scholarship might be her first step toward a life where she is not illegal or afraid.

There are many people like Noor in Afghanistan, crushed by the violence and discrimination by the Taliban. Noor represents thousands of Afghan girls living under a system designed to erase, but they must hold on while International Media finds a solution to this crisis.