“Any state that fails to act to end Pakistan’s invasion & prevent further Taliban brutality are betraying the women & girls of Afghanistan & making a complete mockery of their commitment to women’s rights,” tweeted Christopher (Chris) Alexander, Canada’s first envoy to Kabul. His warning captures the growing sense of betrayal felt by Afghans—especially women—at a time when the Taliban’s return marks one of the most brutal humanitarian crises in recent history.
Fear and Brutality Resurface
According to UNAMA, between May and June 2021 alone, 800 civilians were killed and 1,600 wounded—half of them women and children. The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, told the UN Security Council that Afghan women who worked with government or NGOs fear they will be executed simply for their past roles.
Unlike the 1990s, the Taliban now project a façade of reform to the world, but Afghans see through it. Sociologist Ali Amiri observes that much of the recent displacement is driven by fear of how the Taliban will treat survivors. Women in particular are haunted by memories of cruelty. The Wall Street Journal reported Taliban demands that communities hand over unmarried women and widows for forced marriage to fighters—an act condemned as sexual violence by human-rights groups.
Women as Weapons of War
Accounts from across Afghanistan show that the Taliban use women as tools of war. Families have been ordered to surrender daughters as “wives” to fighters. A young journalist in The Guardian admitted she was terrified both as a woman and a reporter, fearing abduction or forced marriage. Survivors recall the atrocities of the 1990s: Ziagul, a woman from Bamiyan, described how Taliban fighters then raped women during offensives, a memory that still drives families to flee in panic today.
Moqadasa Rasouli, a professor, recalls women being whipped for wearing nail polish, schools for girls being shut, and secret lessons punished with violence. Under Taliban rule, women were forbidden from working, barred from education, and criminalised for appearing in public without a male guardian.
Progress Since 2001
The contrast with the past two decades is stark. Since 2001, women in Afghanistan have made extraordinary progress. By 2017, one-third of Afghan girls were in school, compared with fewer than 10% in 2003. Today, women serve as police officers, politicians, journalists, and civil servants—21% of the workforce in 2020. Life expectancy rose from 56 years in 2001 to 66 years in 2017, while maternal mortality dropped dramatically.
Yet this progress has come at enormous risk. Since 2020, Taliban militants have specifically targeted female professionals:
- Fatima Rajabi, a police officer, was abducted, tortured, and murdered in July 2020.
- Maryam Noorzad, a midwife, was killed alongside a patient and newborn when gunmen stormed a maternity ward.
- Fatima Natasha Khalil, 24, a human-rights official, died in a roadside bombing.
- Malala Maiwand, a journalist, was assassinated after her mother—a social worker—was previously murdered for women’s rights advocacy.
These killings underscore the Taliban’s unrelenting hostility to women’s public presence.
Living Under Threat
Today, many Afghan women live in constant terror. Wazhma Sahel, a 22-year-old military officer, reports receiving death threats online and in writing. She believes she and her colleagues will be executed or stoned in public if the Taliban consolidate power. The OHCHR has already documented floggings and public beatings of women for breaching Taliban rules, such as leaving home without a male escort. In Balkh Province, a women’s rights activist was shot dead on 3 August 2021.
Despite this reality, Taliban leaders continue to assure the world that women’s rights will be protected “within the framework of Sharia.” Yet, as Nishank Motwani of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit notes, districts under Taliban control are “exactly how they were in the 1990s: Women can’t go to school, they can’t go out without a male chaperone, and they live in a climate of fear.”
Empty Promises
The Taliban’s promises are nothing more than recycled propaganda. The “framework of Sharia” is the same pretext under which women were brutalised in the 1990s. The international community, therefore, must recognise the reality: the Taliban have neither changed nor reformed. Taking their words at face value would be dangerously naïve.