In 2021, women’s equality had a banner year in most of the world, except in Afghanistan. There, women and girls lost many of the basic and fundamental rights that they had prior to the fall of the republic, an injustice that continues today.
In June, United Nations Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet observed that “we are witnessing the progressive exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere and their institutionalized, systematic oppression.” A July Amnesty International report captures the shocking extent to which the Taliban were able to quickly implement a series of authoritarian policies that amount to a full-blown “gender apartheid.”
Meanwhile, a summit on regional and global cooperation with Afghanistan, hosted by the Government of Uzbekistan in late July, featured representatives from more than 30 nations including the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia. Those representatives met with Taliban representatives to discuss plans for bolstering mutual cooperation with the rogue regime, unmindful of the fact that soon Afghanistan would return to the front pages due to the drone strike that would kill al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The summit may have produced divergent policies, but surely did not safeguard Afghan women. U.S. officials and their allies issued strong statements in support of Afghan women and nearly all countries called on the Taliban to reopen girls’ schools, but the ongoing gender apartheid was not discussed at the summit or any other major public forum.
The Taliban weaponizing gender apartheid into a theocratic totalitarian cudgel should come as no surprise, given its track record from 1996-2001. What is surprising, however, is the speed and efficiency with which the Taliban has been able to exercise the authority of the state to subjugate half of the population.
Since seizing power last August in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban has issued a staggering 31 decrees rolling back the rights of women and girls. In comparison, they have issued few decrees to cope with the real challenges the country faces such as poverty, massive unemployment, economic freefall, public health crises and natural disasters — even when the warnings like The World Bank’s ‘Afghanistan Development Update highlight the significant increase in household hardship and per-capita income that has fallen by one-third of its previous levels. Such purposeful action suggests coordination at the highest levels of the Taliban regime and a great deal of importance being placed on enacting and enforcing gender apartheid policies.
Afghan women and girls have become a high-stakes bargaining chip for the Taliban as it seeks international recognition and legitimacy, the lifting of crippling U.S. sanctions, foreign aid, direct investment in infrastructure projects and, most importantly, access to billions of dollars in Afghan central bank reserves currently frozen in U.S. and European banks. With so much to gain and very little to lose, the Taliban could, as many pundits predict, decide to use the reopening of girls’ schools in grades 7-12 as a bargaining chip in return for their bold demands. Given the extent to which its gender apartheid state has taken hold, allowing girls in grades 7-12 to return to school will have little impact on their overall outlook if the other apartheid conditions remain in place.
Reports such as the World Bank’s economic recovery study advocate for policies that provide significant sums of money to the Taliban and further integrate the regime into the international finance and banking community, without making much mention at all about the nearly half of the population that remains out of work by force. Given Afghanistan’s relatively tiny economy and the large impact that foreign aid can have on GDP growth, Taliban “economists” could be forecasting a future without women in the workforce.
No one can deny the current catastrophic humanitarian crisis that Afghanistan is grappling with, nor could one ignore the extreme poverty and despair Afghan women and men are facing. International humanitarian efforts should not be done in a way to directly or indirectly enrich and legitimize the Taliban regime. The basic rights of Afghan people, particularly Afghan women, are as important as the ongoing humanitarian disaster. These two are not mutually exclusive, and if anything, the regime is responsible for both crises.
In other words, in trying to mitigate a Taliban-made humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the world community must not sacrifice the fundamental rights of Afghan women and girls.
Whatever the Taliban’s endgame is, the international community must prioritize the rights of Afghan women and girls. The world has a moral responsibility to continue the initiatives it began with Afghan women in 2001. At the very least, Afghan women deserve rights that are enshrined in generations of international norms and standards, codified in Article 1 of the U.N. Charter, and the U.N. adopted Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women — described as an international bill of rights for women. As much as Afghanistan’s neighbors and the international community do not want to upset an already volatile and violent regime, recent history has proven time and again that there can be no security and economic development while half of a population remains oppressed.
Until the Taliban reverses its policies of gender apartheid and human rights crimes directed against Afghan women and girls, the international community should take the following actions:
- Demand the full rights of Afghan women and girls as a non-negotiable starting point for all other negotiations;
- Maintain all economic sanctions against the Taliban regime and conditionalized humanitarian assistance;
- Preserve all 183 Taliban leaderships on the U.N. blacklist
- Continue to freeze Afghan central bank reserves;
- Deny the Taliban the opportunity to seat its representatives at the United Nations Assembly;
- Reinstate a total travel ban on all Taliban leaders, and
- Provide the same dialogue space Taliban occupied for those groups that represent real Afghanistan.
Failure to act in this regard amounts to capitulation to gender apartheid and an acknowledgment that Afghan women’s rights are indeed an effective barging chip.
Naheed A. Farid is an Afghanistan parliamentarian (in-exile) and a fellow at Princeton University’s SPIA Afghanistan Policy Lab.