The Influence Of The Taliban On Afghan Women

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 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.

After the war, the Taliban, a fundamentalist group, known for providing safe haven for Osama bin Laden, came to power. They were known for twisting Islamic law and filtering it to their needs. The Taliban showed no respect to women and despised them, giving them unjust laws with harsh consequences if broken. In the article, “Women in Afghanistan-The Back Story,” it’s stated that, “There were many other ways their rights were denied to them. Women were essentially invisible in public life, imprisoned in their home. In Kabul, residents were ordered to cover their ground and first-floor windows so women inside could not be seen from the street. If a woman left the house, it was in a full body veil (burqa), accompanied by a male relative: she had no independence.” Under the Taliban, women were locked up in their homes like prisoners, and not permitted to leave unless accompanied by a man. Women were already denied the right being involved with the war physically, and now they are being denied the right to actually leave their house physically. This “imprisonment” made it even harder for the women to be involved with the war, because they didn’t have the chance to go out and make a change when they were stuck in their homes. They couldn’t get involved with the war, or act on feminist rights because they didn’t have a chance! Because they were

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.

We live in a society filled with various media outlets. However, many people have their preference on how they get their news. To demonstrate this point, I chose to use an article on a topic that was published in print (online) from the newspaper The Guardian and in a video from Fox News on television.

The history of Afghanistan reflects its patriarchal nature; mostly men and their actions are recorded in the history, which leaves women without a space. The women’s role in Afghanistan’s history is a work in progress; nevertheless women have played an influential and significant role. Women’s contribution is building the Afghan society have not been well document, but Afghani women ricked their life in defending their country from invaders, and educated the next generation of both men and women. The constitution of 1923 gave women equal rights; relatively speaking women had agency and autonomy. Afghan people had progressive attitude toward women and equality, but the Soviet invasion and emergence of the Taliban change the course of the history.

Her male relatives had declined her request for an escort for fear of victimization by the cruel Taliban militiamen. Upon reaching a certain market in Kabul on her way to the hospital, she encountered a brutal Taliban teenage guard who engaged her in harassments before repeatedly shooting her and her child. Fortunately, they both survived the serious bullet wounds due to the intervention of a by standing crowd who rushed them to hospital. A good number of women had suffered the same casualties as a result of poor and unfair treatments against women. Initially, women enjoyed the protection of the law under President Sayid’s ruling and had increasingly afforded numerous rights before the interruption of peace by the Taliban Movement. In the early 1920s, the Afghan constitution provided gender equality, and women enjoyed all human rights including the right to vote. Taliban designed it’s ruling to an oppressive regime against women and reduced them to nothing following the new restrictions set by the Taliban regime. Women were denied the right to basic needs such as healthcare, education, and the right to work. This resulted in them living in extreme poverty and ultimately depending on men. They were also subjected to emotional and physical tortures such as forced marriages, sexual assaults, starvations, and pain inflictions. These events sparked

Then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and established communist rule. One of the protagonists entire life is destroyed by the war, as it tears apart her family. However, the new government stressed educational rights for both genders and helped create even more rights for women. After the Soviets came the Taliban, who took power in 1996. The Taliban were the antithesis of all the progress Afghanistan had made regarding women’s rights.

Soon afterwards with the help in the form of money and weapons from the US, the mujahedeen defeated the Soviets and there was internal struggle for power among them from which Taliban emerged the most powerful. In 1996 they captured Kabul and imposed their totalitarian dictatorship. 50% of the students and 60% of the teachers at Kabul University were women. In addition 70% of school teachers, 50% of civilian government workers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. (FMF). The Taliban justified their brutal regime with the need for a pure Islamic society, but I think their oppression of women, in particular, had more to do with consolidation of power. This view is reinforced by Jan Goodwin’s interview with CNN. She said, “And this is something that when I was last in Kabul a couple of years ago, I was interviewing the then-deputy foreign minister. And he said to me -- he admitted as much, he said, basically, these repressions of women are necessary until the country learns to obey

Hosseini addresses the prolonged government instability and how such conditions enable women’s rights to be denied. A particularly atrocious period was under the Taliban, when the right’s of women were openly denied and unprotected (Gender Inequality in Afghanistan). The Taliban imposed extremely strict interpretation of Islamic law, which included certain expectations for women and those who did not follow such strict protocol faced harsh punishments. Hosseini draws on this concept Farzana, Hassan’s wife, was attacked in the streets of Kabul as “A young Talib ran over and hit her on the thighs with his wooden stick…He was screaming at her and cursing and saying the Ministry of Vice and Virtue does not allow women to speak loudly” (Hosseini 216). The Taliban denied women opportunities to education, employment, and other aspects of social life (“Taliban”).

This site will be very helpful because it answers my central question, “What are the human rights for a woman in Afghanistan?”. The taliban has had a crisis against women for years. Article 27 of the 1977 Constitution stated, “The entire people of Afghanistan, women and men, without discrimination have equal rights and obligations before the law.” However, the taliban has continued to ignore this rule and mistreated women. In 1992, women in Afghanistan were required to cover their heads, legs and arms. Since the mid 1990’s, the status of women has changed dramatically under the rule of the taliban. This site gives more vast information about this topic and will also help me answer subsidiary questions. I will be using this site for most of my iTCHI

The novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, takes place in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s during the Soviet–Afghan War. The Taliban are a Muslim fundamentalist group who took control of Afghanistan's government and ruled during that time period.

Rula Ghani, Nadia Sidiqi, and the groups of civilians of Afghanistan have all given attributes such as hope, confidence, and comfort in their movements to do this. Although immoral and unjust, the Taliban’s oppression of women induced the furtherance of the push for the rights of women not only in Afghanistan, but all over the globe. revolutionizing the modern discord regarding equal rights for all people. Therefore, while astounding, the oppression of women by the Taliban was indirectly a huge leap towards ameliorating women’s

While Afghanistan were under the Taliban they had one of the worst human rights records in the world. The government systematically denied the most basic individual rights. The Taliban closed the women’s university and forced practically all women to quit their jobs. Women were also denied medical assistance, enforced a highly restrictive dress code and limited the ability if women to move about the city. The Taliban first became prominent in 199 and took over the Afghan capital, Kabul in 1994 where Jamila Afghani is from.