The Taliban & Afghan Women: Background

On September 27, 1996, the Taliban, an extremist militia, seized control of the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and violently plunged the occupied territories of Afghanistan into a brutal state of gender apartheid in which women and girls were stripped of their basic human rights.

Gender Apartheid | Taliban in Opposition to Islam | Who Is the Taliban | US Corporate Interests | FMF's Campaign

Gender Apartheid - The Elimination of Women's Rights

Upon seizing power, the Taliban instituted a system of gender apartheid effectively thrusting the women of Afghanistan into a state of virtual house arrest. Under Taliban rule women were stripped of their visibility, voice, and mobility. When they took control in 1996, the Taliban initially imposed strict edicts that:

• Banished women from the work force
• Closed schools to girls in cities and expelled women from universities
• Prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative
• Ordered the publicly visible windows of women's houses painted black and forced women to wear the burqa (or chadari) - which completely shrouds the body, leaving only a small mesh-covered opening through which to see
• Prohibited women and girls from being examined by male physicians while at the same time, prohibited most female doctors and nurses from working. (Currently there are a few, selected female doctors allowed to operate in segregated wards.)

Women were brutally beaten, publicly flogged, and killed for violating Taliban decrees. Even after international condemnation, the Taliban made only slight changes. Some say it was progress when the Taliban allowed a few women doctors and nurses to work, even while hospitals still had segregated wards for women; that in Kabul and other cities, a few home schools for girls were allowed to operate, although only in secret. In addition, women who conducted home schools were risking their lives or a severe beating. But the overall reality of the tragic plight of Afghan women and girls remained virtually unchanged.

The early 2002 defeat of the Taliban liberated Afghan women and girls from the regime's draconian decrees. The world witnessed reports of women in Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul, and other cities going into the streets without male relatives and discarding their burqas--actions that would have garnered brutal punishments under the Taliban.

However, the international community must now act to ensure that women's rights are fully and permanently restored, and to reestablish a constitutional democracy in Afghanistan that is representative of women and ethnic minorities.

Gender Apartheid -- The Reality of Women and Girls

• A woman who defied Taliban orders by running a home school for girls was killed in front of her family and friends.
• A woman caught trying to flee Afghanistan with a man not related to her was stoned to death for adultery.
• An elderly woman was brutally beaten with a metal cable until her leg was broken because her ankle was accidentally showing from underneath her burqa.
• Women have died of curable ailments because male doctors were not allowed to treat them.
• Two women accused of prostitution were publicly hung.

Taliban Law Is In Opposition To Islam

Prior to the Civil War and Taliban control, especially in Kabul, the capital, women in Afghanistan were educated and employed: 50% of the students and 60% of the teachers at Kabul University were women, and 70% of school teachers, 50% of civilian government workers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women.

Women university students in Kabul in 1995,
before the Taliban takeover. Credit: A.R. Ciriello

The Taliban claimed to follow a pure, fundamentalist Islamic ideology, yet the oppression they perpetrated against women had no basis in Islam. Within Islam, women are allowed to earn and control their own money, and to participate in public life. The 55-member Organization of Islamic Conference refused to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's official government. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, regarded by many as an ultraconservative organization, denounced the Taliban's decrees.

Who is the Taliban?

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's the United States through a CIA covert operation based in Pakistan supplied billions of dollars to support insurgent militia forces called the mujahideen (soldiers of God). Following the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989, factions of the mujahideen fell into a civil war and in 1994, the Taliban emerged as a dominant force.

The Taliban is comprised of young men and boys of Afghan descent who have hardly lived in Afghan society. They were raised in refugee camps and trained in ultraconservative religious schools (madrasahs) in Pakistan. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates are the only countries that have granted the Taliban official recognition.

In addition, thousands of Pakistanis and hundreds or Arabs fight alongside the Taliban. Pakistan is the primary source of support to the Taliban, supplying military aid and personnel; Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and known terrorist organizations provide the Taliban with financial support. Additionally, Afghanistan is the one of the world's two largest producers of opium and a major drug-processing center; almost all areas of poppy cultivation are occupied by the Taliban. But perhaps the biggest potential for financial support lies in the petroleum industry.

U.S. Corporate Interests and the Taliban

International oil interests are in fierce competition to build pipelines through Afghanistan to link Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves to Central and South Asia. California-based UNOCAL, a US energy company, led the CentGas consortium that planned to build an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan. The Taliban stood to gain over $100 million a year from this pipeline. UNOCAL announced it was suspending the project at the end of 1998, citing in part, pressure from feminist organizations protesting the company's involvement with the Taliban. Other US and international corporate interests are vying for business in the country.

The Campaign For Afghan Women and Girls

In 1997, The Feminist Majority launched the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan to urge the US government and the U.N. to do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls. Chaired by Mavis Leno, the Feminist Majority Foundation's campaign has brought together more than 200 leading human rights and women's organizations to condemn the Taliban's human rights abuses against women and girls and to put pressure on the US and UN to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan.

The Campaign has been successful in increasing public awareness about the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan, preventing US and UN recognition of the Taliban, increasing the admission of Afghan women and girls as refugees, increasing humanitarian aid to the region and pressuring UNOCAL, a California oil company to abandon its plans for an Afghan oil and gas pipeline which would have produced over $100 million in royalties for the Taliban.

With the fall of the Taliban regime, the Feminist Majority Foundation is now working to convey to the world that women are an essential part of the solution for the future of Afghanistan. In 2002, the Feminist Majority Foundation has intensified its nationwide public education campaign - renaming it the Campaign For Afghan Women and Girls - to win the full and permanent restoration of women's rights, promote the leadership of women in the planning and governing of post-Taliban Afghanistan, increase and monitor the provision of emergency and reconstruction assistance to women and girls, urge the expansion of peace-keeping forces, and support the Afghan Ministry for Women's Affairs and Afghan women-led non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

What You Can Do To Help

Sources

• Testimony of Physicians for Human Rights before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, March 9, 1999.
• "This Could Be You," Jan Goodwin, Marie Claire magazine, March 1998.
• The Taliban's War on Women, Physicians for Human Rights survey report, August, 1998.
• "Muslim Brotherhood Leader Lashes Out at Taliban Militia," AP (Cairo), October 8, 1999.
• Testimony of Karl F. Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, March 9, 1999.

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