Afghanistan: Taliban, one year on; no place for women 

On 15 August 2021, the Taliban walked into Kabul without facing any resistance, effectively taking control of Afghanistan. This transpired because of the withdrawal of US troops from the country, following the Doha agreement between the Taliban and the US in 2020, leading to the collapse of the Western-backed government. US forces left Afghanistan after almost two decades since usurping the Taliban in 2001. 

What immediately followed was thousands of Afghans frantically attempted to flee the country, fearing the return of the harsh Taliban rule of the 1990s. In the ensuing chaos, on 26 August 2021, at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, which hapless Afghans besieged, terrorists from the Islamic State Khorasian (IS-K) faction set off a bomb, in the midst of evacuation by the international community of their citizens, that killed 13 US soldiers and 60 Afghans and left around 160 wounded.  

This was portentous of what was to come for a new government that was unprepared and ill-equipped to rule the nation of about 40 million people. For a country where international development assistance constituted 43% of GDP and 75% of public expenditure before the Taliban took over in August 2021, the running dry of international funding, what with aid agencies scrambling to keep finances away from the Taliban, left the country in dire straits.   

Sanctions by the US and other Western nations, coupled with the US’ freezing of the $9bn in Afghan central bank assets, brought the aid-dependent economy to its knees, which, combined with the worst drought in 30 years, engendered a disastrous declivity in living standards.  

The collapse of the Afghan economy and currency (the afghani) led to mass unemployment, with reports having it that over 90% of the workforce is unemployed. Afghanistan’s public sector, that for decades has been the largest employer, has been forced to cut staff, and work at minimum capacity. Lower-level workers like bodyguards, drivers and cleaners have been rendered jobless. The public sector has largely depended on foreign aid to employ people and pay wages.  Now many government workers have not been paid in months.   

Earlier this year (2022), the UN World Food Program had estimated that over 22 million people, more than half the country’s population, were facing crisis-levels of hunger. This was a marked increase since September 2021, when it was estimated that 14 million people were going acutely hungry.  95% of the population of Afghanistan is already suffering from food insecurity, like skipping a meal a day.   

In September 2021, according to UN statistics, the poverty rate was 72%. The UN fears, that now, this has gone up to 97% (as per statistics provided by the United Nations Development Program), classifying the country as facing ‘universal poverty’. This has led to malnutrition and the collapse of the health-care system.  

The humanitarian disaster that is besetting the country is only likely to worsen if sizeable aid does not come in. The World Food Program has reported that many families have resorted to either compelling their children to work or selling them off for money to pay for food. The UN says that 88 percent of Afghan families has at least one child, between 11 years of age and 17 years of age, working under difficult conditions. 

The Taliban has proved to be ineffective in stymieing the country’s deepening crisis. Its handling of the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake in the Paktika province in June 2022 is a pointer to that.  

Although the conflict which brought the Taliban to power is largely over, there were still over 2,000 civilian casualties (700 deaths and over 1,400 injuries) reported between August last year to mid-June this year, according to UN statistics. 

Around 50 percent of the casualties since August 2021 were attributed to the actions of the IS-K group. This is evidence that the Taliban is yet inefficacious in dealing with terrorism. 

It is also unable to hasten or procure vital aid because the international community looks at its track-record of human rights with disdain. Its ideologically driven endeavour to strip the rights of women and girls and its attacks on former government employees, journalists and human-rights advocates have alienated it from the international community.  

The Taliban has not been recognised as a legitimate government universally, not even by Pakistan that single-handedly manifested its resurgence. The lack of legitimacy for the Taliban has aggravated the economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, starving it of crucial aid from foreign governments and international donors.  

A trickle of humanitarian aid and other assistance provided by UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations has cautiously commenced. But there are many obstacles by way of Taliban restrictions, logistical difficulties including barriers to transferring money into the country, security concerns, staff evacuations, closures, and legal uncertainties including fear of violating sanctions. Around USD 1 billion came from the international community last winter, thanks to the Taliban’s willingness to cooperate, and helped avert the serious threat of famine. 

In June 2022, the UN Security Council reported that the Afghan economy had contracted by an estimated 30 percent-40 percent since the Taliban takeover in August last year. 

The Taliban is also not an inclusive government. It does not represent the multi-ethnic Afghan community. It represents only the Pashtun majority, that forms the bulk of its cadres. In September 2021, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution invoking the Taliban to establish a system of governance that included minority groups and women.  

The status of women, in particular, has been severely undermined under Taliban rule. Ever since the Taliban took over in August 2021, it has set substantial hindrances to women’s and girls’ health and education, curtailed freedom of movement, expression, and association, and deprived many of earned income.  Women and girls have been effectively removed from the Afghani public life.   

The Taliban is heavily ideologically averse to women’s rights. While, initially, the Taliban promised that women would be able to exercise their rights within Sharia law, including being able to work and study, this endearment only turned out to be empty promises.  

As Angelina Jolie put it in her article in the Time magazine on 16 August 2022, “Overnight, 14 million Afghan women and girls lost their right to go to high school or university, their right to work, and their freedom of movement.” Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, emphasised, on 9 May 2022 in a statement, that “[Afghanistan] is the only country in the world where girls are banned from going to high school.” She further added that “there are no women in the Taliban’s cabinet, no Ministry of Women’s Affairs, thereby effectively removing women’s right to political participation. Women are, for the most part, also restricted from working outside the home, and are required to cover their faces in public and to have a male chaperone when they travel.” 

The Taliban administration has singularly taken away the rights of women’s political participation by abolishing the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Women have been banned from working outside their homes (according to a law passed at the close of 2021). Only women whose jobs cannot be done by men are permitted to go to work, for example, limited jobs in education, health, and some policing jobs. According to the same announcement, the only jobs that women were allowed to do for the Kabul government were to clean female bathrooms. 

Women judges, prosecutors, and lawyers have bolted the country or been shunned and substituted by former Taliban fighters and madrasa graduates who have no formal training. 

Even women who worked from home, doing things like embroidery, are becoming redundant with the financial crisis taking away their livelihood, what with them finding no employers. 

Female participation in the labour force had increased from 15 percent to 22 percent in just over a decade, between 1998 and 2019. However, with the Taliban imposing more restrictions on women’s movements outside the home since their return to power, the percentage of females working in Afghanistan had shrunk to 15 percent in 2021. 

An Amnesty report in July stated that the Taliban had “decimated the rights of women and children” in Afghanistan. It highlighted the abuse and torture meted out to some women who had taken part in protests against the new restrictions imposed on them. 

The Taliban has come down heavily on girls’ education, halting secondary education (grades 7 to 12) for girls. This has affected 1.1 million pupils, as per UN statistics. According to the UN, girls in some districts have access to education, but this is not universal.  While primary schools for girls are open, teachers have not been paid for months. The Taliban has blamed a lack of female teachers and the need to arrange the segregation of facilities for its decision to abandon higher education for girls.  

And the financial crunch has left families with no funds for transportation and schoolbooks, forcing them to sacrifice basic education for the girl child. What is worse is this is making the custom of child marriage more predominant. 

The Taliban has placed appalling and callous restrictions on women’s movement. In May 2022, the Taliban authorities issued a diktat making it imperative for women to wear Islamic hijab and fully cover their faces when outside. They were only allowed to leave their homes when it was exigent. Male relatives were punishable if this law was not abided with. Women are also banned from traveling long distances (more than 45 miles) without a male chaperone. Unchaperoned women are often denied access to essential services. 

Besides, the Taliban has been reported to be extorting money and food from communities, and are singling out, for browbeating, women it perceives as its foes, such as those who worked for foreign organisations and the previous Afghan government.   

The Taliban has only exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and poverty in Afghanistan by its suppression of women. In 2020, the male to female ratio in Afghanistan was 105.40 to 100. The Taliban has effectively reduced the status of such a large part of its population to nonentities.  

To the Taliban’s credit, however, goes the fact that the security situation in Afghanistan has significantly improved since it took over. It has managed to stave off lawlessness within the country to a considerable degree, and neutralised the tyranny of tribal warlords. The Taliban immediately, on taking control, declared a general amnesty for all political and military opposition and announced a nationwide decommissioning of weapons. As a result, civilians started to feel safe once again and mobility increased significantly across the country. 

Nonetheless, it would do the Taliban well to climb down its high horse of ideology and respect human rights, particularly women’s rights, and form an all-inclusive government. That would help it solicit the sympathy of Western governments and foreign donors, and help it rebuild a devastated economy and dissipate a humanitarian crisis that now seems endless.