Post Taliban Men Essay

– While the Afghan government and international community are working for women’s rights, since most women are illiterate, they are not engaged in the process. Thus the government has reduced women’s rights when it feels it is politically expedient: In February 2009 President Karzai signed a law which affects several key rights of Afghan Shi’a

The Taliban had a large number of restrictions placed on the rights of Afghan women. They were not allowed to work anywhere outside of their home. This meant that a woman could not be a professional in any type of job. Women also could not deal with any male shopkeeper or doctors.

Today in the post –Taliban era, women still struggle with their rights. Resolutions were produced and rights for women have advanced since September 11th but in order to move forward, much work needs to be done. Hundreds of years of repression for Afghan women will take a lot longer than a few years to actually revolutionize. There is violence towards women that are not practicing traditions customs and fear retaliations from the Taliban. Customs are difficult to change as well as government policies. (Bora Laskin Law). In Afghanistan, religious and cultural values, politics, and an uncertain acting government have played a major part in the struggle for women’s rights.

The Constitution that was created in Afghanistan during the 1920’s, stated equal rights for women and men. In fact, during the year of 1959, new policies created educational and career opportunities and voluntary removal of having to wear the burka. Women’s roles become similarly equivalent to male roles; they had the opportunity to acquire knowledge from universities, and were provided jobs in industrial, business, and entertainment settings. The atrocities that came about during the Mujaheddin and Taliban control were unheard of years prior, when women lived in peace and prosperity

The beginning of an Islāmic group started to take over Afghanistan in 1996, after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan. This group is known as the Taliban. The Taliban’s mission is to make an Islāmic government in Afghanistan. The Taliban started with Islāmic students from Pakistan. Then in “September 1996 the Taliban seized control of Kabul (Afghanistan’s capital) and carried out a strict interpretation or explanation of Islāmic Law”(Hayes NP). The Taliban killed the Afghan president, Mohammed Najibullah in Kabul. That is when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The Taliban controlled 95% of Afghanistan. Then once the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, they started announcing their restrictions, that were harsh against women.

The institution of education in many regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan is virtually nonexistent. Many girls don’t have access to schools (Stones into Schools p.4) and those that do usually don’t graduate from high school. While Greg Mortenson’s Stones into Schools and the documentary The Miseducation of Pakistan deal with two different areas, they both show many similar themes.

Women’s illiteracy in Afghanistan as high as 85 percent and the new government has been a broad program not only for children but also for the adults. Mazar-I-sharif has 172 registered adults’ literacy classes and more are opening all the time as teachers and women to receive the free lesson.

The Taliban creates separate facilities for the men and women and does not attempt to hide the fact that working conditions are far worse for the women. During the initial arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, Mariam, Laila, and Rasheed experience a level of hopefulness. They have all heard that the Taliban brings peace to the territories they conquer, and Kabul is ready for relief after years of war. Mariam and Laila’s hope quickly disappears when they learn their lives will have more restrictions now than ever before. According to the Taliban rule, women are no longer allowed in public without a male relative, and they must always wear burqas when traveling.

Before reading The Underground Girls of Kabul I assumed women in Afghanistan had at least some semblance of a meaningful life. I assumed female children had the opportunity to go to school. I assumed they were treated on a human level, and I assumed there was hope for equality in the not too distant future. None of these things seem to be the case. For the majority of women in Afghanistan your life is pre-determined from the moment you are born. “The ownership of an Afghan girl is literally passed on from one male—her father—to the one who becomes her husband. He will take over the ruling of her life, down to the smallest details if he is so inclined.”(Page 44).

According to the Taliban’s interpretation of the Holy Koran, women were inferior in every aspect of life. As a result women and girls were stripped of their rights and were considered possessions. As Sirius Black said in the novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, “… to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” (Rowling, 2000). The Taliban’s treatment of their “inferiors” shows their indifference towards the helpless innocents of their society, an inability to feel compassion regarded as a villainous trait.

The role women have in Afghanistan is unjust and unreasonable. Due to the rules and regulations, also known as the Sharia laws, implemented by the Taliban, women are constantly fighting a battle to survive in their everyday life. They are denied simple freedom. For example, women are deprived of education, liberty, and freedom. Forget about being able to drive, women cannot even step out of their house without permission from their husbands, or a legal male guardian.

The purpose of this paper is to present a gendered perspective of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ (2007) and it also proposes to enumerate the role of Taliban in the treatment of women, importance of education and the concept of marriage as a microcosm of the Afghan society as a whole, with a special reference to Ishmael Beah’s short story ABC Antidote (2009) Khaled Hosseini not only nostalgically presents an insider’s view of the Afghan society, both before and after the Taliban regime, which was prior seen through a First-World perspective but he is also very critical of the policies of the Taliban, particularly of the discriminations against women and children. He presents Taliban’s misogyny and the control of religion

Elementary education of children, mostly girls, was shut down in Kabul, where nearly all of the elementary school teachers were women. One of the biggest atrocities that the Taliban has continually inflicted upon women is depriving them of an education. The Taliban has gone to extreme and brutal lengths to not only prevent women from going to school but to punish those who do. In Mingora, Pakistan the Taliban had set an edict that no girls could attend school after January 15, 2009. The group had already blown up more than a hundred girls’ schools.

To the western perspective, the Taliban is a name which generates an immediate image of militant Islamic politics, explicit support of terror-oriented tactics on a global scale and a localized social hierarchy in which women are treated with gross inequality. Indeed, while the first two characteristics noted here would draw the attention and military action of the United States in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, it is this latter feature which may ultimately be the most persistent, troubling and lasting of characteristics. Today, more than a decade since al Qaeda masterminded the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and more than a decade since the U.S responded by invading Afghanistan in pursuit of both al Qaeda personnel and the Taliban regime which gave them safe harbor, Afghani women continue to be the subject of much international concern. As the discussion here will demonstrate, the human rights violations visited upon the women of Afghanistan during the Taliban's rule would be grotesque and widespread. Moreover, the discussion will illustrate that though the War in Afghanistan would improve the fortunes of women there in the years following 9/11, these fortunes like the fortunes of Afghanistan itself are impacted by uncertainty, instability and violence. While advances in the treatment of women have been forced by the attention and presence of the

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. The Taliban was ejected out of power by the U.S. military and other forces in December 2001 because of the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.