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The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total takeover.
We are academics who interviewed 15 Afghan women activists, community leaders and politicians over the past year as part of an international effort to ensure that women’s human rights are defended and constitutionally protected in Afghanistan. For the safety of our research participants, we use no names or first names only here.
The Taliban ruled all of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Everyone faced restrictions under their conservative interpretation of Islam, but those imposed on women were the most stringent.
In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban regime and worked with Afghans to establish a democratic government.
Officially, the U.S. war in Afghanistan was about hunting down Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The Taliban had sheltered bin Laden in Afghanistan. But the U.S. invoked women’s rights as a justification for the occupation, too.
Last year, after 20 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. signed an accord with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw American troops if the Taliban severed ties with al-Qaida and entered into peace talks with the government.
Officially, in these talks, Taliban leaders emphasize that they wish to grant women’s rights “according to Islam.”
But the women we interviewed say they believe the Taliban still reject the notion of gender equality.
The Taliban included no women in its own negotiating team, and as their local fighters are taking over districts, women’s rights are being rolled back.
A schoolteacher whose district in northern Mazar-e-Sharif province recently fell to the Taliban told us that, “In the beginning, when we saw the Taliban interviews on TV, we hoped for peace, as if the Taliban had changed. But when I saw the Taliban up close, they have not changed at all.”
Using mosque loudspeakers, Taliban fighters in areas under their control often announce that women must now wear the burqa and have a male chaperone in public. They burn public schools, libraries and computer labs.
“We destroy them [and] put in place our own religious schools, in order to train future Taliban,” a local fighter from Herat told the channel France 24 in June 2021.
Such actions demonstrate to many in Afghanistan that the Taliban disagree with the basic principles of democracy, including gender equality and free expression. Taliban negotiators are demanding Afghanistan adopt a new Constitution that would turn it into an “emirate” – an Islamic state ruled by a small group of religious leaders with absolute power.
That’s an impossible demand for the Afghan government, and peace talks have stalled.
Many Muslim countries have steadily increasing gender equality. That includes Afghanistan, where women have been struggling for and gaining new rights for a century.
In the 1920s, Queen Soraya of Afghanistan participated in the political development of her country alongside her husband, King Amanullah Khan. An advocate for women’s rights, Soraya introduced a modern education for women, one that included sciences, history and other subjects alongside traditional home economics-style training and religious topics.
In the 1960s women were among the drafters of Afghanistan’s first comprehensive Constitution, ratified in 1964. It recognized the equal rights of men and women as citizens and established democratic elections. In 1965, four women were elected to the Afghan Parliament; several others became government ministers.
Afghan women protested any attacks on their rights. For instance, when religious conservatives in 1968 tried to pass a bill banning women from studying abroad, hundreds of schoolgirls organized a demonstration in Kabul and other cities.
By the end of the socialist regime in 1992, women were full participants in public life in Afghanistan.
In 1996 the rise of the Taliban interrupted this progress – temporarily.
The post-Taliban era demonstrated Afghan women’s resilience after a grueling setback. It also highlighted the public’s desire for a more democratic, responsive government.
That political project is still in its infancy today. The U.S. withdrawal now threatens the survival of Afghanistan’s fragile democratic institutions.
So the Taliban are forcing their authority over the Afghan people using warfare, much as they did in the 1990s. Many women hope what comes next won’t repeat that history.
(This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.)
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Published: 01 Aug 2021,02:34 PM IST