The sudden collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces, and the speed with which the Taliban seized control of the capital Kabul has shocked intelligence agencies, human rights organisations, and the people of Afghanistan. However, as the Taliban and its supporters celebrate the group’s return to power after more than two decades, Afghan women are terrified about their future under an Islamist regime. Women now fear that the Taliban will upend the progress made in women’s rights since 2001, when the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) was overthrown by the United States (US) and its allies, and return the country to the dark days of the late 1990s, when the Taliban was last in power.
Since taking power, the Taliban has tried to present a liberal face in a bid to gain international legitimacy. In a press conference on August 17, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid promised that the group would respect women’s rights within the framework of Islamic law. Mujahid said that women would be allowed to return to work and girls could attend schools. Furthermore, the Taliban’s Doha spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, told the BBC that girls would continue to have access to education and that the leadership would make sure that all of its fighters abide by this policy.
Back to School in a New Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/KwFKykzBIa
— Suhail Shaheen. محمد سهیل شاهین (@suhailshaheen1) August 23, 2021
Yet, Afghan women find it extremely difficult to digest the assurances made by the Taliban and have considerable reason to suspect that the group’s attitude to women has not changed, pointing to the repressive IEA regime from 1996-2001.
Women’s education under the previous Taliban rule
Life under Taliban rule was oppressive for women. Apart from “egregious acts of violence against women,” which included rapes, abductions, and forced marriages, the group severely restricted women’s access to work and education. According to a 2001 US State Department report, “The Taliban ended, for all practical purposes, education for girls. Since 1998, girls over the age of eight have been prohibited from attending school. Home schooling, while sometimes tolerated, was more often repressed.” The report further states that the Taliban was “ensuring that women would continue to sink deeper into poverty and deprivation, thereby guaranteeing that tomorrow’s women would have none of the skills needed to function in a modern society.”
A 2002 study on women’s rights under the Taliban notes that before it took control of the country in 1996, women and girls attended co-educational schools, and over half of Afghan university students were women. “Most educational opportunities offered to women and girls abruptly ended when the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996,” the report states. It further adds that girls lived under “constant fear of severe punishment for disobedience of the Taliban’s law prohibiting educational facilities for women.”
According to analysts, the Taliban is guided by an extremist version of Islam and its use of Sharia law to formulate policies has had a negative effect on women. As a result, less than 1% of girls were enrolled in primary schools in the 2000-01 period, and women’s literacy rates “plummeted to one of the lowest in the world”, 13% in urban areas and 4% in rural areas.
After Taliban policies “nearly wiped out” women’s education in Afghanistan, however, the US invasion in 2001 and the subsequent ouster of the group has facilitated substantial progress in the field of education, particularly for women.
What has been the progress in women’s education in Afghanistan since 2001?
The new Afghan government that replaced the Taliban in 2001 allowed the flow of aid and the entry of humanitarian organisations into the country, which in turn led to the rapid growth of education in the country. Furthermore, the 2003 Afghan constitution restored educational rights for women and reversed the policies of the Taliban era.
In fact, articles 43 and 44 of the constitution guarantee that education is a fundamental right of all Afghans and stipulate that it be paid for by the government. The constitution also makes it easier for the government to implement plans specifically targeting women’s education.
Aid organisations have also played a major role in increasing access to education, especially for women and girls. For instance, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) states that since 2008, it has “helped increase access to education for three million Afghan girls, many for the first time in their lives.” USAID states that its ‘Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund’ has made “education more accessible” to students by building more infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. The Agency provides scholarships for girls and partners with the Education Ministry to improve its reach.
All these efforts have led to much progress and are reflected in key indicators like school enrolment rates, and literacy rates. According to UNESCO, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for females in primary education improved from nearly 0% in 2000 to more than 80% in 2018. Similarly, the female GER for secondary education went up to 40% in 2018 and the literacy rates for females aged between 15-24 went from around 22% in 1996 to 56.3% in 2016.
This progress by Afghan female students has been recognised and reflected on a global scale. In 2017, an all-female Afghan team was selected for participating in a robotics competition in the US, despite several obstacles, including being denied visas initially and the death of a team member’s father in a suicide bombing. Similarly, in July 2020, a group of female Afghans won an award at an international astrophysics competition in Poland.
With this level of progress, it is no surprise that Afghan women see the Taliban’s return to power as spelling nothing short of a disaster for women’s education. After the militants seized power in Afghanistan, several videos have emerged on social media showing women protesting against the Taliban and calling for their rights to be respected. Others have tried to flee the country in search of better lives elsewhere. In short, it seems that most Afghans, especially women, do not trust the Taliban to uphold their promise to respect women’s rights.
A group of women held a protest in Kabul following the Taliban's seizure of the Afghan capital. Taliban leaders have made reassurances that girls and women would have the right to work and education, but women are fearful that the reality may be different https://t.co/coOQbUQ6L8 pic.twitter.com/2womQYOlAn
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 18, 2021
Why are Afghans refusing to trust the Taliban’s promises?
While the Taliban has vowed to protect and respect women’s rights, their actions tell a different story. According to reports, Taliban officials in Herat have banned co-education in colleges in the province and called it the “root of all evils in society.” Several Taliban leaders have also noted that women’s right to education will be decided by Ulemas, a body of religious scholars. “Our ulema will decide whether girls are allowed to go to school or not,” a Taliban official said last week. In another incident last week, the founder of an all-girls school burnt student records to “protect them and their families” from the wrath of the Taliban.
Nearly 20 years later, as the founder of the only all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan, I’m burning my students’ records not to erase them, but to protect them and their families.
— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021
2/6 pic.twitter.com/JErbZCSPuC
Against this backdrop, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called the Taliban’s “charm offensive” to convince the world that they are a responsible member of international society a “PR drive.” HRW states that, with its history of treating women as “subhuman,” the Taliban cannot be given the benefit of the doubt. “If the Taliban want to convince the world that they have changed they need to prove it, and the world should compel them to do so,” the organisation states.
What can the international community do to ensure that the Taliban sticks to its promises to respect women’s rights?
On August 18, the US, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, along with 18 other countries, issued a joint statement urging the Taliban to respect the rights of women in Afghanistan. “We are deeply worried about Afghan women and girls, their rights to education, work, and freedom of movement. We call on those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan to guarantee their protection,” the statement read. “We will monitor closely how any future government ensures rights and freedoms that have become an integral part of the life of women and girls in Afghanistan during the last twenty years,” it added.
A Brookings policy paper suggests that the US needs to “maintain a strong policy focus on women’s rights in the country” even after the troops withdraw from the country. It states that the US should “set minimal standards of women’s rights” in the country and withhold economic aid to the country if they are violated. The paper also calls on the international community to support human rights defenders in Afghanistan and provide them with asylum visas if they become targets of violent retaliation.
Therefore, without continued support from the international community, the gains made in women’s education over the last two decades could crumble, just like the Afghan government, in the face of a resurgent Taliban.