“Afghanistan is not a country for women but a cage for women,” – Afghan academic and activist Humaira Qaderi
As of the beginning of January 2023, the Taliban has ordered Afghan shopkeepers to behead their female mannequins in a bizarre and confusing attempt to push citizens towards the ‘traditional’ Sharia values they are striving for. Although the reason officially stated for this peculiar order is that allowing mannequins to exist as they are ‘goes against Islamic values’ and ‘promotes idolisation’ (which is not permitted under Sharia law), it can be inferred that this order is an extension of the anti-female views the Taliban has previously displayed, due to their long history of pushing discriminatory legislation which promotes violence against women.
The order initially started as a mandatory beheading of all female mannequins, but quickly faced heavy backlash from shop-owners, who refused to comply due to the monetary and sales losses they would face without the heads on their mannequins. The order has since been reformed to instead require the heads to be covered, resulting in almost-dystopian scenes where female mannequins are covered with aluminium foil, cloth and even plastic bags. Although at face-value, this order seems like a part of the Taliban’s agenda to implement strict Sharia law, it must be viewed in light of their other restrictive orders toward women to fully understand its implications.
“If the Taliban cannot accept a doll, how can they accept a woman with a voice to be in Afghanistan?” – Marzia Babakarkhail, ex-judge in Afghanistan, campaigner for women’s rights
Afghanistan, which has had tumultuous political instability for decades, has experienced dramatic shifts in attitudes towards women for as long as the political complications have been around. As recently as the early 1970s, the country saw women wearing miniskirts and bathing suits, and attending all forms of educational institutes, supporting a steady progression of women’s rights. In fact, women in Afghanistan were eligible to vote as early as 1919, gaining equal legal status in 1964. How does that image of women’s rights in Afghanistan reconcile with the current one, which is drastically poorer? The answer lies within the influence of the Taliban.
After the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001, all the setbacks to women’s rights made during the previous 5 years of Taliban rule were slowly overcome, with the country seeing stable changes in attitudes towards women. There was real progress made with public attitudes since the first Taliban takeover in 1996, for example in putting in place a new constitution in 2003 which enshrined women’s rights, or with the passing of the Elimination of Violence Against Women law in 2009. However, this progress was brought to a sharp halt with the capture of Kabul in 2021. In less than 2 years since the Taliban’s second takeover of the country, the quality of life for women has significantly deteriorated, leaving nothing but the ruins of the rights that should be afforded to women.
Systematically, over the last year and a half, women in Afghanistan have had their rights slowly stripped away, while the rest of the world is standing by and watching. Women’s rights have been violated in every form imaginable. From abolishing the entire Ministry of Women’s Affairs, to prohibiting most forms of education for women (girls are now only allowed to study until the 6th grade, and choose from specific ‘prescribed’ university courses) and to entirely removing the female presence from the media, the Taliban have systematically degraded women and restricted their rights and abilities to mere platitudes. They have also imposed a chaperoning system, in which a woman must always be accompanied by a mahram (a man whom a woman is forbidden to marry under Islam due to blood relations, essentially a permanent ‘safe’ male figure in Islam) when travelling, a rule which has unofficially resulted in unchaperoned women being denied service in most commercial spaces. With this many restrictions, the lives of Afghan women could be compared to that of a hapless young child – not able to gain education past a certain age, constantly chaperoned, not allowed to interact as an adult in public spaces, heavily restricted from joining the workforce. A decree on women’s rights passed by the Taliban in early December 2021 stated that “A woman is not a property, but a noble and free human being”, but with this quality of life can one really truly assert that Afghan women are free?
Loss of individual freedoms and education are heinous in themselves, but this however isn’t the most tragic thing happening to women in today’s Afghanistan. The most critical issue is the shocking violence that Afghan women face. Studies by the UNFPA showed that even before the Taliban takeover, around 87% of Afghan women experienced violence and abuse, demonstrating that public attitudes towards women were already appalling. Although there have been no updated statistics since the takeover, it is not too much of a stretch to imagine attitudes have further deteriorated. With the complete removal of women from media spaces such as TV shows and the news (as per Taliban decree), and the heavy restriction of women in most other professional fields, these spaces have now become entirely male-dominated, leaving the few remaining women at risk of serious harm, and subject to a potentially dangerous power imbalance. A report by UN Women suggests that there has been nearly a 90% reduction of women in fields such as journalism/media, other commercial fields and in the healthcare sector, meaning that not only are women being barred from equal opportunities, but also that the remaining women are surrounded by only men at work. Given the public attitude on violence toward women, it is not unlikely to imagine that working in male-only fields could result in extremely dangerous situations for women. An uneasy hypothetical for most women, but the chilling reality that Afghan women face every day in the workforce.
The idea that violent attitudes towards women are mounting is materialised by the recent orders to behead or cover female mannequins. Shop owners who cannot afford to remove the heads of their mannequins are resorting to other methods such as putting plastic bags over their heads, creating scenes reminiscent of suffocation and strangulation. In interviews done for news outlets such as the BBC, NDTV, The Times and NPR, ordinary Afghan women repeatedly expressed the sentiment that seeing such dystopian scenes where violence towards women was so freely accepted caused them great discomfort and apprehension, and left them fearing for their own safety. Although these shop owners are simply following orders, when paired with all the other humiliating and restrictive orders against women, it is clear that there is country-wide animosity towards women, animosity which could easily breed further violence. Such a pressing situation must be addressed, and requires urgent involvement from third parties.
“No words come to me about this travesty, except curiosity that I live in a world with such hatred of women is celebrated.” – Unnamed Afghan woman for a news article by NDTV.
So, what happens next? Citizens of Afghanistan, both male and female, are growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of response from the Taliban to calls for reform and are imploring a nation-wide reform of attitude towards women. There have been protests and rallies all over the country, showing that the citizens themselves are interested in change, and that there is an active incentive for external intervention. The most common criticism from Afghans is that Islam itself doesn’t necessitate the measures the Taliban has established, with Muslim scholars agreeing that the Taliban’s decrees “defy Islamic values”. Some activists in Afghanistan have urged other Islamic nations to step in and show that a functioning Islamic government (and the implementation of Sharia law) does not require such stringent and sexist measures. Such protests and demonstrations are likely to continue in Afghanistan, potentially increasing in frequency if the situation continues to worsen rapidly. Tensions between the opposing sides in the country could boil over, resulting in disastrous consequences if left unchecked, further stressing the urgency for intervention.
On an international scale, the Taliban met with Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed on the 20th of January to discuss reform to their rules – a meeting which the UN came out of suggesting that the Taliban has the potential to become flexible and was willing to make some amendments to their orders. Talks are still in progress, and the UNFPA is stepping up its presence in Afghanistan, while the UN stresses their commitment to Afghan women in this situation. The situation in Afghanistan is undeniably a severe violation of human rights. It is a situation which warrants international interventions, sanctions and other disciplinary measures, and a situation which will undoubtedly bolster the necessity and instrumental role of human rights law in maintaining a just, diverse world.
Sources
“In focus: Women in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban takeover.” unwomen.org, UN Women, 15th Aug 2022, accessed Jan 2023.
Lyse Doucet. “Afghanistan: Some Taliban open to women’s rights talks – top UN official.”BBC World News, 20th Jan 2023.
Lyse Doucet. “Afghanistan: UN’s top women meet Taliban over female aid worker ban.” BBC World News, 20th Jan 2023.
NDTV News Desk. “Watch: Mannequins In Kabul, Hooded And Masked Under Taliban Rule.” NDTV, 17th Jan 2023.
Oppenheimer, Maya. “Taliban orders Afghan shopkeepers to behead mannequins.” The Independent, 3rd Jan 2023.
“Women in Afghanistan: The Back Story” Amnesty.org, Amnesty International, 24th Nov 2022, accessed Jan 2023.
“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan: Where Are We Now? Gender Alert No. 1.” UN Women, December 2021.
