To be neither seen nor heard: the oppression of women in Taliban controlled Afghanistan

At 11:59 p.m. on August 30, 2021, the last United States Military planes left the Kabul airport in Kabul Afghanistan, marking the end of the twenty years of military occupation and political strife known as the ‘War on Terror.’ Thirteen U.S. servicemen were killed in the haphazard operation in which U.S. military personnel, U.S. citizens, and Afghan allies were evacuated from the warring country. The United States-Taliban Deal or the Doha Accord is a “peace agreement that ends the war in Afghanistan for the benefit of all Afghans and contributes to regional stability and global security,” according to the official report published by the U.S. Department of State. This document also officially recognized the country as The Islamic State of Afghanistan, providing its new totalitarian government diplomatic recognition. 

Upon returning to power in 2021, the Taliban promised it would provide Afghans more freedoms and rights than they had allowed during their previous dominion over Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, specifically in regard to women. However, only a month after the U.S. left Afghanistan, the Taliban segregated university classrooms and entrances based on gender, including the rule that students could only be taught by professors of the same sex or old men. Many schools enforced a new dress code at this time as well, making hijabs for women mandatory. This was only the start to the next step of their plan, which was the slow and gradual banning of women from education past sixth grade and the closing of such schools. However, in January of 2022, the Taliban promised that they would reopen all schools and allow women back in the classroom. This allowed for European and U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to continue with relatively stable relations. 

In March of 2022, Hibatullah Akhundzada (the Taliban’s ‘emir’ or leader) overruled his ministers and decided that the female schools would remain closed for the foreseeable future. He also decided that the current laws were not strict enough, banning women from parks, gyms, and bathhouses in November of 2022. This same month, the emir reintroduced public punishment of criminals, including floggings and public executions. In December of that year, the ban of women from education was formally written into law. Women who showed up at their university for class were told, at gunpoint, that they could no longer attend while men were ushered in for class. Female professors were fired as were many other female workers in various positions across the country, most jobs banned to women by February of 2023. 

The Taliban did not stop at education or work, though. In May of 2022, all women were required to fully cover themselves, including their faces, in all public settings. There was also an unspoken and encouraged rule that women should stay home, which was easy to enforce since they were banned from almost all public places. When they are able to leave the house, however, they cannot leave without a male chaperone accompanying them.

Women across Afghanistan were devastated as they were barred from the right to education, self expression, and to contribute to society in any form. As reported by Afghan refugee turned American journalist Bushra Seddique, a fourteen year old girl cried as she watched her younger brother board the school bus she was no longer permitted to use, asking if the Taliban is at war with women. She dreams of finding a secret school to attend, even if it means harsh beatings from the Taliban. A twenty-two year old woman teaches eighty girls in secret in her basement, wishing she could handle taking on more. 

In a story reported by CNN journalists, a girl and her two siblings escaped to Pakistan to seek medical attention. The girl, who was given the fake name of Arzo, had poisoned herself by swallowing arsenic after having fallen into a severe depression after the Taliban banned women from school and most public places. Dr. Shikib Ahmadi, the pseudonym of an Afghan doctor that was interviewed secretly by CNN, stated that the number of female patients he has had to see has risen by forty to fifty percent since the Taliban took control of the country. He stated that roughly ten percent of those female patients commit suicide, most turning to ingesting household cleaners and chemicals. This interview took place before the ban on male doctors treating female patients in January of 2023. As of today, women are banned from becoming doctors as well as from seeing male doctors, resulting in virtually zero medical care for women in Afghanistan.

The “vice and virtue” laws, as the Taliban labels the most recent social restrictions upon women in Afghanistan, are even more extreme. In August of 2024, women were banned from speaking and singing, even if it is heard from outside their residence. They were also forbidden from looking a man in the eye that is not their husband or a blood related family member. As the official documents state, a woman’s voice and body is a source of vice and temptation for men, which could lead them to sin. 

When these laws started being reintroduced in Afghanistan, there were multiple protests that ended in violence and harsh punishments of those caught. Public protests in Afghanistan have all but disappeared as public organization is also banned, but that does not mean that Afghanistan is staying silent in the face of their oppression. Afghan women have fought back and resisted through the aforementioned secret schooling of girls. Afghan women both inside and outside of the country have taken to social media in support and protest, one recent video surfacing of Afghan women singing to protest the laws silencing them. Refugees have shared their stories and the stories of others with journalists, activists, and politicians. Countless humanitarian aid groups are working to help Afghanistan as well, such as the United Nations, the Red Cross, and Women for Afghan Women. The fight continues quietly and in secret, but it is alive and well. As attested by Bushra Seddique, “in secret, behind closed doors, Afghanistan is still breathing.” And it always will.

(Featured image source: Sayed Habib Bidell via UN Women)