Life under the 'new Taliban'

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they promised women equal rights but more than a year later, the Taliban are escalating restrictions against women, stripping them off their basic rights and compelling them to lead a life like a second-class citizens.

In the latest diktat, the Taliban banned women from entering gyms and public parks, further squeezing women from public spaces.

Earlier the regime ruled that women should cover their faces in public spaces and instructed them to get out of their homes only in cases of necessity. Women are barred from most jobs outside the home. According to one of the restrictions imposed, only women whose jobs could not be done by men were allowed to come to work. According to a similar announcement, the only job that women could do for the Taliban regime was to clean female bathrooms in public buildings.

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The regime has also abolished the ministry for women’s affairs and has ultimately removed women from any kind of political participation.

And that’s not all, women are banned from travelling long distances without a male relative and in cases where women are not accompanied by a close male relative, they are then denied access to essential services.

Women in Afghanistan are living under a constant threat of violence, deprived of basic rights, these Afghan women and girls are relentlessly carrying on with their lives.

Various women activists in Afghanistan say that the Taliban’s newly intensified attacks and threats against women are partly in response to Afghan women’s sustained demands for equal rights.

The Taliban were previously forcing these restrictions on women through the morality police in the country but now countless Taliban men have taken the role of enforcers dictating terms to women in the country.

Taliban abuses and restrictions reported by women in recent weeks-

1. Female students who earned high school diplomas before the Taliban took over have been prohibited from registering for further studies.
2. A woman in Kabul reported that the Taliban members had entered the girls’ elementary schools to enforce the regime’s month-old order of covering the full face except for the eyes. During these recent raids, the Taliban enforcers beat the violators with electrical cable sticks. In one such case, they even harassed a five-year-old girl who did not cover her face.
3. In some cases, the Taliban have even ordered principals of schools to examine the bodies of 10-11-year-old girls checking for signs of puberty and further expel girls from school who appear to be older.

For all the women in Afghanistan, life has taken a 180-degree turn. Around 14 million Afghan women and girls have lost their right to work, to go to school.

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