Now that Afghanistan is back in Taliban hands and the US is being berated for abandoning the country’s women and girls, two questions arise. Will the incredible gains made by Afghan women in the past 20 years be reversed? And if they are, were those advances in women’s education, reproductive health and employment prospects no more than cosmetic change?
The world is fearful that the Taliban will reimpose the brutal system that all but eliminated women’s rights during their five-year rule between 1996-2001. Girls and women were barred from attending school, from working, from leaving the house without a male chaperone and from accessing healthcare delivered by men. Along with the mandatory all-enveloping burqa, a ban on female involvement in politics or public speech made Afghan women effectively invisible during the Taliban years.
But as Taliban fighters entered the Afghan capital Kabul this week, the militant group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen insisted their “policy” on women was clear and nothing like that of the past. He said women’s rights would be respected and they would continue to have “access to work and education (as long) as they observe a hijab”. He said the group would investigate reports from the southern province of Kandahar and Herat in the northwest of the country that some Taliban fighters were arbitrarily sending women home from offices and university campuses.
