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Advocates often apply the term \u201cgender apartheid\u201d to describe two-tiered systems of men making all the decisions about political and social affairs and assigning themselves agency in all public spaces while women are relegated to work that can be done from home or traditional gender roles of child-raising and homemaking. This is the situation Afghan women and girls find themselves in today. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Tightening the Noose<\/h2>\n

In the Taliban\u2019s first press conference after taking Kabul in August 2021, spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said<\/a> that the Taliban were \u201ccommitted to the rights of women within the framework of Shariah\u201d and that the group would not discriminate against women. While the Taliban have made<\/a> similar<\/a> claims in the past, these words quickly proved hollow.<\/p>\n

Indeed, immediately after seizing power the Taliban prohibited girls from attending secondary schools and transformed the Ministry of Women\u2019s Affairs, tasked with safeguarding women\u2019s rights in all 34 provinces, into the ironically titled Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. This marked the beginning of a string of more than 140 orders and decrees that have thoroughly dismantled all existing mechanisms, laws and institutions that were put in place to protect against human rights violations and promote women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The regime has renamed and repurposed the Attorney General\u2019s Office, which is now called the General Directorate for Monitoring and Follow up of Decrees and Directives. The Taliban also eliminated institutions like the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Commission to Eliminate Violence Against Women, shelter and safe houses for battered women, civil society-led protection and empowerment programs and women-led organizations. They also rescinded laws and policies geared toward eliminating violence and harassment against women.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2021, the Taliban\u2019s first four months in power showed that they were not going to treat women any different than they did during their previous rule in the 1990s. In the early period of their current rule, Taliban decrees and edicts restricted women from working or teaching at public universities, from working for the government, or traveling beyond 45 miles away from the home without a mahram<\/em> (or male guardian). The Taliban decreed that women must be accompanied by a mahram \u2014 even during surgery \u2014 while visiting male health providers<\/p>\n

In the last two years, it continued to get worse. The Taliban decreed that the best form of hijab <\/em>\u2014 which they use as a synonym for women\u2019s covering or clothing \u2014 is for Afghan women to wear a burqa (i.e., to be fully covered from head to toe) or to simply stay home. The Taliban also banned women from working for the U.N. and NGOs and restricted women from entering public parks and participating in sports. The regime also invalidated thousands of divorce cases decided under the previous government. Their most recent decree called for the closure of beauty salons<\/a>, leaving some 60,000 women without an income to support their families.<\/p>\n

These restrictions and rules continue to be more brutal and draconian. Whereas two years ago, women could travel a short distance without a mahram<\/em>, today women must have a male guardian to even leave the home. In 2021, women were banned from many jobs, but could work for NGOs or the United Nations. Today, as noted above, they cannot work for these organizations. Until December 2022, universities were open for women, but now female students and instructors are not allowed to enter public or private university campuses.A longer-term threat that has also emerged over the last two years, which would perpetuate the Taliban\u2019s misogyny over future generations, is the \u201cmadrassafication\u201d of the education system in Afghanistan.\u00a0This has three forms: the curriculum of the regular public schools is being revised to accord with the Taliban\u2019s interpretation of Islam; girls and boys are being encouraged to attend madrassas rather than public schools; and new \u201cjihadi madrassas\u201d are being created in every province that provide boys with military and Islamic education.\u00a0The Taliban are also putting more investment into madrassas for both boys and girls. Parents are further incentivized to send their girls to madrassas because there are fewer harassing raids, like expelling girls under the age to 12 who are taller or physically bigger for their age.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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A majority of Afghan citizens oppose the Taliban\u2019s draconian female education restrictions and there are reports of local communities quietly looking the other way. But the Taliban have increased enforcement \u2014 establishing the Female Moral Police Department in August 2022, who are deployed to public and private educational institutions and women-only markets to inspect women\u2019s hijab.<\/p>\n

But Afghan women are not prepared to concede all that they had achieved over the last two decades. Many have bravely gone to the streets to demand their basic rights despite being met with Taliban violence and repression. While most public protests have largely subsided, they have been replaced with indoor protests with women and girls holding signs in Dari, Pashto and English rejecting Taliban policies. Outside the country, women have issued statements, launched media campaigns and even conducted hunger strike<\/a>s to urge world leaders and the U.N. to recognize the Taliban\u2019s gender apartheid and hold the regime accountable for crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

It has now been 725 days that girl students above sixth grade have not been able to attend school and 265 days since universities have stopped accepting female students. Under the Taliban today, Afghan women are deprived of their livelihoods, identity, education, employment, leisure, travel, sports and equal access to humanitarian aid. The Taliban dictate what women should or shouldn\u2019t do in the privacy of their homes, even prohibiting listening to music. As a result, Afghan women face serious mental health issues including fear, anxiety, anger, helplessness, insomnia, lack of self-respect and thoughts of suicide and self-harm. The Taliban\u2019s anti-women policies have emboldened the country\u2019s patriarchal norms.<\/p>\n

Now What?<\/h2>\n

The Taliban\u2019s leadership has shown over the last two years that they are unwilling to deliver on the promises about women\u2019s rights<\/a> made during the Doha Agreement negotiations with the United States.\u00a0Indeed, they are putting measures in place to effectuate generational change that is alien to hundreds of years of Afghan culture. The response must have equal scope and resolve:\u00a0to push back with arguments, resources and accountability measures at local, national and international levels over many years.<\/p>\n

While a parade of Islamic religious authorities<\/a> has declared<\/a> that both traditional and mainstream interpretations of Islam do not relegate women to being objects or second-class citizens, this argument has so far failed to overcome the Taliban\u2019s desire for what they claim<\/a> is a \u201c100% Islamic system.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more pragmatic motivation for social decrees against women could be to avoid defections by the most radical of the Taliban\u2019s supporters to ISIS or other more extreme terrorist groups. The Taliban\u2019s success as an insurgency movement relied on recruiting young male fighters who are themselves from conservative rural areas and\/or educated in radical madrassas \u2014 often in Pakistan \u2014 and were attracted to fight based in part on a call to rid Afghan society of un-Islamic Western values, particularly an alleged disrespect to women.\u00a0If the Taliban do not deliver on these fighters\u2019 visions of a so-called \u201cpure\u201d Islamic society, this argument goes, they may fight for ISIS and seek to overthrow the Taliban.<\/p>\n