Women in Afghanistan

As soon at Taliban came in control in Kabul woman had no right to do anything.They weren't allowed to step out of their doors, they weren't allowed to work, woman/girls weren't allowed to go to school, ban on woman laughing.Those that didn't obey the laws were whipped in public, were beaten etc.The Taliban had stated that this was being done for their protection.An example of Taliban's violent treatment against the woman is; a woman wearing nail paint had her fingertips chopped by a Taliban officer. Taliban had just the say thing to say against this, “it was being done to safeguard

In Afghanistan, Women’s rights were very denied and completely dismissed. Women were treated horribly. They were beaten, abused verbally, and even killed. Under the rule of the Taliban, women were better off staying in the safety of their own homes.

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.

Growing up and living in Afghanistan as a woman has its challenges. Parents choose who can marry you and they choose everything for you. In this book, Laila and Mariam both show the struggles it is to be a girl, and how much disrespect they get in Afghanistan. Both Mariam and Laila are married to the same man, and he is abusive to both of them. They also live under Taliban rule, and the rules that they set are very unfair for women. In Khaled Hosseni’s novel, he has many different themes but the most prevalent one is of woman inequality, and that is shown through multiple accounts of abuse, disrespect, and unfairness.

During the mid 90’s, an Islamic fundamentalist group called the “Taliban” took control of central Afghanistan. This sudden regime change caused a catastrophic loss of civil liberties as well as civil disrupt throughout the entire country, causing many surges in Afghani immigrants. Political journalist of “The Taliban: War, Religion, and the New Order in Afghanistan” Peter Marsden, writes about how women in Afghanistan were forced to wear chakri 's in public, and could not leave the home without a male guardian. In afghanistan, women faced many internal barriers that violated their unalienable rights, and this in turn impeded their ability to evade from such violation through

Knowing that 85 percent of Afghan women reported that they had been experiencing physical, sexual, psychological violence due to being apart of a forced marriage is very forlorn to hear. After researching many encounters relating to the hardships of marriages of Afghan women, it has come to my attention that Kevin Sieff can’t distress his tone enough when story of Farima and the customs of marriages and divorce.

Amira Arzu, an Afghan teenager, was only 15 years old when she was forced into an arranged marriage. She was kind hearted, intelligent, elated, and humorous until one day this was all taken away. December 15th, 2016 she was on her way to school in Afghanistan not knowing that her parents were driving her to a Mosque, the Shrine of Ali, to get married to her future husband, Ahmed Akmal. A few days later she found herself on the street Taimani in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amira ran past workers ordering from street carts, women with their children, men in trucks honking at one another, and many looked at her uncertainty as she was running through the streets of Kabul. At the time, she was wearing a blue floral hijab, jeans, and a dress as in Afghanistan you cannot wear a dress without covering your legs. Many deduced that she was without her husband on the streets of Kabul, which is not normally the case, but Amira was different from the other wives and arduously wanting to figure out an escape.

Afghan women seem to have better fortune in America than in Afghanistan. Before Amir and Baba moved to America the only women that were mentioned were not around anymore making it seem like they were not important in the first place. Once Amir and Baba were living in America there were female characters brought in to show that they were able to live their lives better than in Afghanistan. The women were better off in America even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan because they were no longer talked about as disappointments. The lack of women in the novel shows how the men thought of the women as if they were not as capable of doing the things they were able to. Baba was a business leader who did things that were unspeakable in Afghanistan

Prior to the rise of the Taliban, life for women in Afghanistan was improving dramatically. In Laila’s father’s words, “Women have always had it hard in this country… But it’s true, it’s a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan” (Hosseini 121). Women were able to teach in universities and schools and even hold office in the government. However, once the Taliban came to power in 1996, women were stripped of their basic rights and practically ordered on house arrest.

As odd as the restrictions women had, the punishments for violations were even more unbelievable. To humiliate the women, most of the punishments were available to be seen by the public. The penalties for broken laws were often held public in sports stadiums, town squares, or other densely populated areas for everyone to see. For a minor infraction, oftentimes the one who committed the transgression was often beaten until unconscious. A woman once had her thumb removed because her thumb nail was exposed, and when the Taliban guard saw this, she was taken into the town square to have her exposed thumb taken off. The things that the Taliban do to innocent citizens are cruel, and they should be the ones being reprimanded, not the other way around. In general, many of the punishments that the Taliban give out to women are, in most cases, much too excessive for such insignificant “crimes”. (Delcan Walsh)

There was once an Afghan woman who was repeatedly raped for 5 days by a local police officer. The police officer got his justice by being locked up, but the Afghan woman is now in hiding in fear of being punished by the other local policemen. This is just one sad story of what an Afghan woman has to go through on a daily basis. Stories like this are happening because of the results of the Soviet-Afghan War. Before the war, Afghanistan was a fairly free place. Women could go out on their own, wear what they wanted, and go to university. Now they are restricted from almost anything that involves the outside world. The Soviet-Afghan War, which happened in 1979, was a war in which the Soviet Union, who did not like what was happening in Afghanistan,

In a male dominated society, the women of Afghanistan face many pressures and limits that are taught and ingrained in them at a very young age. Women and girls are seen as less than men and boys. They are viewed as being weak and unimportant. They are often pulled out of school and shunned to the house during their middle school years. Society sees no reason to educate girls when the whole point of girls is to serve as wives to their husbands and mothers to sons. They are taught that their entire worth depends on how happy they make their husband. As depicted by Jenny Norberg in The Underground Girls of Kabul, Afghanistan is a horrible place to be a woman. The pressure to birth sons, uphold a perfect reputation, and the economic disadvantages women face often force them to become men to have basic human respect and survival.

The Taliban implemented laws restricting the movements and actions of women in Afghanistan in public places. While attempting to visit her child in a home for young girls, Laila is beaten within an inch of her life as a consequence of walking outside without a male escort (Hosseini). The extreme course of action, beating a woman for walking alone, demonstrates the illogical and unjustifiable actions the Taliban promotes the practice of in Afghanistan. The women and men have dramatically unequal rights.

With a strict and unforgiving hand the Taliban ruled over Afghanistan from the 90's until 2001. The Taliban hold an extremist interpretation of teachings from the Koran, the Islamic holy book. According to them, the Taliban, the Koran states that God has deemed the man of the house as the primary authority figure; they have rule over every one in the household be it wife or child. Their interpretation states, also, that women are not to reveal any part of them selves except their eyes and palms of their hands. Along with that, women are not allowed to work, or leave the house with out a male relative escort. Any deviation from these rules would be meet with a harsh punishment; the lose of a

The Taliban became responsible for punishing those who committed crimes by killing the criminals. These acts started a small fear in the Afghanistan people. Soon, the Taliban group became a well armed and well funded militia with the support of a province in Pakistan. As soon as fear stirred among the Afghani people, the president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, tried to create an alliance against the Taliban in Kabul, the capitol. This alliance fell through, and the president eventually fled Afghanistan. In December of 1995, the Taliban took hold of Afghanistan as a result.