Afghanistan and the Taliban regime
In the year 2021, the Taliban took over Afghanistan after the U.S. and NATO forces began their final withdrawal in the same year. On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul without significant resistance, as Afghan security forces had largely abandoned their posts. The Afghan president fled the country, and the Taliban declared victory, signalling the end of the U.S.-backed government. The fall of Kabul led to a chaotic evacuation of U.S. and allied personnel, Afghan interpreters, and others who had worked with the Western coalition. The Taliban have re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and reinstated their interpretation of Sharia law, which has resulted in the curtailing of women’s rights, repression of dissent, and restrictions on media freedom.
A month after the takeover, the Taliban’s attitude toward women became apparent for the first time. After a statement from the Ministry of Education that included nothing about girls, secondary schools opened for boys. In response to the limitations, Afghani women staged street marches to demand the freedom to work and pursue their education. The administration of the Taliban often stopped them forcefully. Right after that, the government’s virtue and vice ministry issued an order requiring women to travel with a close male relative if they went more than 72 kilometres. Less than two months later, on May 7, 2022, the government declared that women must wear head-to-toe garments, in accordance with an order from its supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
“Those women who are not too old or young must cover their faces, except the eyes,”
was said in the official statement.
Hair and beauty salons were the last remaining venues for women to congregate out of the prying eyes of the Taliban. However, few were surprised when the Taliban leadership announced that these would be closed.
The Taliban’s minister of higher education issued an edict on December 20, 2022, mandating that all public and private universities immediately halt all female enrollment until further notice. After four days, there was still another severe hit. The Ministry of Economy under the Taliban instructed all foreign and local non-governmental organizations working in Afghanistan to request that their female staff cease working or face having their permits removed.
“Unfortunately, one month ago all the schools, courses, universities and organizations for the female section were closed. I was left in a world of sorrow. Since I was the eldest in the family, all the responsibilities were on my shoulders, I was the sole bread winner of my family.”
said the 23-year-old woman who worked as a police officer and was studying at the same time before the Taliban took over.
The problem of medical assistance for women in Afghanistan
The fact that it’s prohibited for women to take medical care from a man to a woman. That a man has no right to touch a woman shows that the medical service can provide only female representatives. Those women alive now, who in the 70s managed to get medical education from the Soviet Union, who during the 1990s and 2000s were able to get their education on the West came back and didn’t have enough time to leave Afghanistan in 2021, those women, who will be self-taught thanks to their cognitive, analytical and communication skills but that won’t be enough.
Maternal mortality will skyrocket and is already increasing significantly. Currently, the situation is especially complicated for those women, who are living outside of big cities of Afghanistan. If suddenly in the village there is a woman midwife healer or gynaecologist with medical education, they are already at that age when they are not able to leave their houses. If they don’t have a husband, they are widows, or their sons died or there is no man in the house- they cannot leave. Consequently, a woman giving birth nearby must somehow get to the house of this gynaecologist. If the woman giving birth does not have a man, then she will simply die alone.
The second problem is that in Afghanistan girls are sold, including the newborn girls. The goal is obviously not to educate or teach them in the West. Afghan girls are basically sold for the price of food and the rise of hunger on the huge scale is only worsening the situation.
“I went to the hospital to sell one of my kidneys for 150,000 Afghanis (around $1,457). The doctors told me that if I had surgery and had my kidney removed, I would die. However, I want to sell my kidney. Our economic situation is so bad that I am ready to sell one of my children for 150,000 Afghanis. So I want to save other members of my family.”
said one of the local residents of Afghanistan to the “New York Post”. Living with her 70-year-old father, Bibizana, a 30-year-old mother of four said:
“I sold my kidney. Then I had to sell one of my daughters. I bought the necessary materials for the house with that money. I wish I had not been born into this world. I wish I had never seen these days. My days are going like hell. I have to endure it.”
Only men are considered to be full-fledged citizens of the country, not women. There was a discussion: if a woman is seen as a pet, and it ended up with an answer that pets are considered to be more important than women.
The number of women will decrease so much that it will be necessary to replace them by someone else. Firstly, it will be a replacement by women from the neighboring countries- simply by stealing, dragging them across the border. There will allure them, steal them from Turkey and Egypt, through Muslim countries to carry out traffic, it will be a business on a huge scale, and everyone will be at risk being there. Especially women of children bearing age and girls, so on vacation with the girls will be dangerous to go even with the father as he can be simply eliminated. It will be a global problem, and it is already taking place right now.
For that reason, what is happening right now in Afghanistan is a direct threat to us all…
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