Don’t Betray the Women of Afghanistan

A human rights calamity is unfolding in Afghanistan. Since retaking power in mid-2021, the Taliban have implemented more extreme policies against women than any other regime in the world. Taliban leaders have issued over 90 edicts limiting women’s rights: they have banned women and girls from attending university or school beyond the sixth grade, restricted their access to health care, prohibited them from leaving home without a male guardian, and revoked many of their social and legal protections. Every new restriction on Afghan women strengthens the Taliban’s dictatorial grip on the entire Afghan population and feeds extremism in a society already occupied by dozens of terrorist groups. Although the Taliban are fighting the terrorist group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), they allow some 20 other terrorist groups to operate freely in Afghan territory.

Yet even though Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits women’s education, some analysts are urging the United States to normalize ties with the Taliban, including by reopening a U.S. embassy in the country. These proponents argue that by doing so, Washington would improve its ability to monitor assistance programs and engage with Taliban leaders in the country, including to press them to moderate their policies. But taking steps to normalize relations with the Taliban before their leaders halt their systematic persecution of women would be a gross betrayal of the millions of women and girls whose lives the United States helped to transform over two decades. During the Taliban’s previous stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, they closed schools to girls, forbade women to work, and targeted women with extreme forms of punishment, including public floggings and executions.

From 2002 to 2021, however, during the U.S.-led NATO mission to stabilize Afghanistan, Afghan women served as cabinet ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians, diplomats, and journalists, reflecting historic levels of involvement in society. It is fair to say that empowering women represents the best work the United States did in Afghanistan and its most positive legacy. In early 2021, months before the U.S. military withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover, 2.5 million Afghan girls were attending primary school, and 27 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament were held by women.

Normalizing relations with the Taliban before they reverse their anti-women policies would amount to pretending as if those two decades of progress never happened. Moreover, allowing the Taliban to crush the lives of half the country’s population would make a joke of American claims of defending human rights worldwide. It would also reveal Washington’s disinterest in adhering to its own legislation: the 2017 Women, Peace, and Security Act codified the United States’ commitment to gender equity and inclusion in security, peacemaking, and peacekeeping, making gender equity an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. The UN is trying to maintain a firm line with the Taliban: ahead of a February UN-sponsored meeting of Afghan Special Representatives from 25 different countries in Doha, the Taliban demanded that all Afghan civil society leaders be disinvited. UN Secretary-General António Guterres was right not to give in to this demand.

But the United States must more fully support UN efforts to promote an inclusive political dialogue that includes Afghan civil society leaders and that places women’s rights at its center. Washington must also expand human rights sanctions against Taliban leaders and work with the UN to officially designate more of them as terrorists. Finally, Washington must sustain its refusal to extend diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime until it reverses its persecution of women. Washington must not give the Taliban’s repression of women a blank check—especially because the deepening persecution of women will feed other kinds of extremism.

SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

When the Taliban returned to power after the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, their leaders made pledges that they would govern the country differently from the way they did previously by allowing women to work and study. They closed Afghanistan’s schools to girls immediately after they took power but promised to reopen them. A Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters that women would be permitted to participate in society “within the bounds of Islamic law,” adding that “when it comes to experience, maturity, and vision, there is a huge difference” between today’s Taliban leaders compared “to 20 years ago.”

In reality, there is no difference when it comes to the treatment of women. Over the past two and a half years, the Taliban have gradually stripped women and girls of their rights, tightened control over their lives, and even sanctioned violence against them. The Taliban started their campaign against women in September 2021 by disbanding the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and replacing it with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, whose mandate is to ensure that Afghans follow the new regime’s strict interpretation of Islam. Shortly after that, the Taliban issued orders requiring all professional women to quit their jobs, and in December 2021, they forbade women to travel abroad without a male relative. When Afghan schools were reopened to girls in March 2022, only those 12 years old and younger were allowed to return. Later that year, the Taliban further revealed their true intentions toward women when they announced that women would no longer be permitted to attend university or to work for international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

The Taliban are also increasingly encouraging violence against women, both in word and in deed. Official public floggings of women as well as men have become commonplace for what the Taliban deem “moral crimes,” such as adultery, theft, or running away from home. In May 2023, the head of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Kandahar, Mawlawi Abdulhai Omar, instructed his province’s leaders to ban women from going to cemeteries and health centers on the pretext that women visitors and patients were inappropriately wearing makeup or pretending to be ill.

Omar told the provincial leaders to arrest and punish fathers and brothers for not “correcting” these transgressions in their daughters and sisters. In a culture that already faces the scourge of honor killings, such decrees seem likely to increase the prevalence of domestic violence. In cities and rural areas today in Afghanistan, women cannot walk freely on the streets. Millions of girls cannot receive an education, and hundreds of thousands of women cannot earn an income to help support their families. An increasing number of girls are being forced into marriage, often with much older men, and suicide rates among female Afghans are on the rise as they lose hope for their future.

DEADLY EMBRACE

During a recent trip to Pakistan and Qatar, senior government interlocutors told one of us that the Taliban were unlikely to change their anti-women policies. Nonetheless, the United States must take a principled stand for Afghan women and girls, regardless of the Taliban’s response. It has room to do so, as evidenced by a few strong positions it has taken already. In early December, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the minister for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Sheikh Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, and the head of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences, Sheikh Fariduddin Mahmood; both men are widely believed to be behind the ban on girls’ secondary education.

Aside from limited sanctions, however, the United States has been largely reluctant to actively penalize the Taliban for their persecution of women. Instead, the U.S. government has focused on seeking innovative ways to support Afghan women and girls. In September 2022, for example, the State Department launched the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience, a public-private partnership between the State Department and Boston University that encourages collaborations between leading Afghan women and the U.S. private sector, civil society, and academia to support Afghan women’s access to online education and employment.

While AWER is a laudable effort and sends the message to Afghan women that the world has not completely forgotten about them, it is not enough. Women and girls in Afghanistan may find creative ways to build their skills and learn virtually, but unless the Taliban reverse their discriminatory policies, women will be unable to deploy these skills in Afghan society. In addition to initiatives like AWER, Washington and like-minded governments must put more penalties on the Taliban, such as expanding sanctions on their leaders and curbing those leaders’ ability to travel.

Some commentators argue that Taliban leaders should be encouraged to travel abroad and attend international conferences, despite their harsh policies against women, on the theory that international exposure will soften their policies. But this argument increasingly appears flawed. Taliban leaders have been able to travel and meet frequently with international representatives over the past two and a half years, yet their policies toward women and girls keep getting worse.

NAME AND SHAME

One way that the United States can support the women of Afghanistan is to lead the fight to formally label the Taliban’s policies as “gender apartheid.” The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court introduced apartheid as a crime for which governments worldwide can be punished. Historically, this crime—described by the ICC as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”—refers to discrimination along racial lines. But UN experts are now pushing for a specific recognition of gender apartheid in the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention, which will be discussed in April in the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly. If gender apartheid is included, designating the Taliban’s policies as a form of gender apartheid would prompt their classification as a crime against humanity.

In the case of the Taliban’s policies, the designation would be remarkably apt. Banning a group of people—defined by an immutable physical characteristic—from accessing education, employment, and health care; restricting their travel unless they are accompanied by a guardian; imposing special legal punishments on them; and systematically excluding them from public spaces such as gyms and beauty salons is precisely what the anti-Black South African apartheid regime did from the 1960s to the early 1990s. Applying the term to the Taliban’s policies and codifying it as an international crime would also be enormously valuable in practice. It would help galvanize international leaders and NGOs to take the issue more seriously and create a legal obligation to address the systematic oppression of women in Afghanistan.

The gender apartheid designation would also supplement other UN actions aimed at supporting women and girls in Afghanistan. In December 2023, UN Security Council Resolution 2721 called for the establishment of a UN Envoy to Afghanistan. The resolution stipulates that this envoy should have experience with human rights and gender issues. China and Russia abstained from the vote, however, and called on the UN to consult with the Taliban before appointing such an envoy. By establishing a role for an envoy and convening the meeting of Afghan Special Representatives in Doha, the UN has begun directing its attention to the plight of Afghan women. But Beijing’s and Moscow’s disregard for the rights of Afghan women will make this effort a slow, uphill battle.

The UN’s accelerating efforts deserve strong U.S. support. The United States can also increase its engagement with Afghan opposition leaders to show the Taliban that they are not the only game in town. The Taliban took power through force, and they have no real claim to political legitimacy. There are other Afghan voices that can justifiably claim to represent the will of the Afghan people, even if they are currently in exile.

SECONDARY BENEFITS

Because the Taliban are likely to remain in power in the near term, complete disengagement is not the solution. But the United States must show greater willingness to defend Afghan women and stand up for human rights. Aside from being the right thing to do, supporting Afghan women will also help undermine extremist trends in the country, a necessary step given the plethora of terrorist groups that operate in Afghanistan—terrorist groups that appear to be flourishing. The latest UN Sanctions Monitoring Report, released in January 2024, notes that al Qaeda has established eight new training camps in Afghanistan. ISIS-K just claimed responsibility for the March 23 attack in Moscow that killed over 130 people, and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which operates within Afghanistan and has been responsible for a rising number of attacks on Pakistani civilians and security personnel, is also gaining strength.

The more the Taliban suppress women’s involvement in society, the greater the likelihood that extremist ideologies will proliferate, driving recruitment for terrorist groups. The Taliban are opening new religious schools and implementing new curricula in public schools that teach young men about its radical form of Islam, thus breeding a new generation of extremists. The best way to reverse such developments is for the United States to aid the international community in its fight to keep women and girls in school and maintain their agency in society.