Back to the wall, gritty Afghan women set to take Taliban on

Afghan women push back against draconian law

Around 120 Afghan women under the banner of ‘Women for Afghanistan’ and comprising lawyers, human rights activists, politicians, journalists, doctors, paramedics, filmmakers, disability activists and women from the diaspora and from within Afghanistan, came together to hold the All Afghan Women Summit over three days – from September 11 to September 13 – in the Albanian city of Tirana to push back on the Taliban’s New Vice and Virtue Law announced from September 1.

Last nail in coffin

The law is beyond draconian. It mandates that women in Afghanistan should not be heard in public neither can they sing or read poetry aloud. Women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in public and front of non-Muslim women and always travel with a male ‘mahram’ or chaperone while venturing out of their homes.

It was the last nail in their coffin after having been pushed out of higher education and their work places and livelihood in the last three years of Taliban rule.

“We are being erased,” Fawzia Koofi, a former deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament told this writer from Tirana. Koofi, who had been the first female in her country to be elected to that post after she became an MP, was the Chair of the summit in Tirana. She had organised similar meetings earlier with Afghan women in exile in Turkey. This time within 11 days of the Taliban leadership coming out with the Vice and Virtue Law, they organised, met and told the world that Afghan women are not going to take this law lying down. And the world better sit up and listen to them.

Resolution against gender apartheid

Participants of the All Afghan Women Summit in a resolution have urged the international community not to recognise the ruling Taliban regime as the legitimate government of Afghanistan unless there is a reversal of all current restrictions. They termed the bans on Afghan women and girls which as nothing short of “gender apartheid”.

Afghan women should be allowed to contribute to their country politically, socially and economically, the resolution stressed. It further urged the international community to hold the Taliban accountable for the ongoing human rights violations in Afghanistan by bringing the de facto Taliban regime rulers before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and holding them accountable for their crimes against Afghan women. Summit participants demanded the immediate reopening of schools beyond grade six for Afghan girls and universities and institutes of higher learning from which they are presently barred.

Threat to women journalists

“I think the rights and freedoms of Afghan women are not important for the rest of the international community and the world openly or secretly interacts or deals with the Taliban based on their interests and agenda,” laments Najiba Ayubi, former head of Killid Media in Kabul. Ayubi is a recipient of the prestigious Courage in Journalism Award in 2013 and is recognised as one of the hundred heroes of freedom by the RSF (Reporters Sans Frontiers) in 2014 for her work in the media.

She was forced to leave the country she loved so dearly in 2021 when the Taliban started threateningly knocking on her residence door after they had stormed into Kabul. She now lives in the US and continues to champion the cause of her Afghan journalists and sisters from exile. Hundreds of women in radio and television stations have lost their jobs and sit at home without any livelihood and are constantly under the threat of attacks from the Taliban regime for their previous work. Dozens of women journalists have been assassinated along with male journalists who spoke truth to power.

Women want equal say in decision-making

One of the demands at the conference was that the international community should allocate resources to ensure justice for victims and establish clear standards for proper documentation of human rights violations against Afghan women.

“Participants called for the greater participation of Afghan women in leadership and decision-making processes related to prioritising and distributing of international humanitarian aid,” the resolution read and stressed that the aid should reach directly to women’s aid organisations from humanitarian aid agencies so it doesn’t get usurped by the Taliban and reaches the women beneficiaries directly. International aid has virtually dried up and those hit hardest are the women in the country.

There has been loads of critique of late about how women’s groups are being kept out in discussions being held with the Taliban including the one held recently in Doha, Qatar. The resolution at the Tirana summit reflected that emphatically – “Any meeting or dialogue with the international community and the Taliban should include women representatives of Afghanistan as part of the relevant delegations, both within and outside Afghanistan and in accordance with human rights laws,” the Tirana statement said.

Between the devil and the deep sea

Women, who have stayed on in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, have been kept out of their workplaces and hence deprived of incomes with which they ran their households. The situation is no different for women who have fled Afghanistan to countries like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Germany, Canada and USA, as they too have no profession to fall back on in their country of refuge. They receive only a small dole as a refugee. An Afghan woman journalist is thinking of selling her traditional jewellery in the country of her exile instead of breaking stories in a newsroom. Their entire lives have been turned upside down and no one seems to care.

One estimate says that of the 4.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran, over 70 per cent are women and children. Official estimates in mid-2024 put the total number of refugees in neighbouring countries at 6 million. Afghan women have said that they are not welcome in Pakistan, Iran and Turkey and they see their stay there as a stop gap arrangement till their papers are cleared for the western countries like the US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway etc.

Toll on mental, physical health of Afghan women

For some of them it has meant waiting for months and years.

“I was on anti-depressants as I was so miserable in Turkey and often got suicidal thoughts as I did not know how to support my children…my husband was doing any odd job he could get to bring home some money to feed us,” an Afghan woman journalist opened up.

It’s after a two-year wait that she, her husband and their children could finally move to the US. The mental and physical heath of Afghan women has been seriously compromised since the Taliban walked into Kabul in August 2021.

“This is why Afghan women gathered in Tirana to strategise a political pathway and ensure accountability and humanitarian aid – it was to push for a political settlement,” Zehra Zaidi, executive director of the UK-based Action for Afghanistan told this reporter from the summit venue.

‘Save Afghan women’: Malala’s plea to the world

At a recent rally in UK, Nobel Laureate Malala Yousufzai had urged the international community to come to the rescue of Afghan women against the oppression of the Taliban.

“Each of us who have the freedom to speak must not look away. We must call on our leaders to act with urgency,” Malala, who had been shot for going to school in Pakistan, had said in her appeal.

There was an urgency in the meeting following the Taliban’s latest Vice and Virtue Law imposed on Afghan women. The meeting was co-hosted by the governments of Albania and Spain and supported by the government of Switzerland. “The summit could be a turning point and act as a crucial vehicle to give Afghan women a voice again”, the organisers of the conference hoped.