What Did Taliban do with Women? *Warning Real Footage

When the Taliban first appeared, many Afghan women thought the chaos of war was finally ending. What they didn't know was that a very different kind of nightmare was just beginning. And nothing they had lived through could prepare them for the way the Taliban treated them. In 1977, before the Taliban, Afghanistan looked very different. In the capital, Kabul, women worked as judges, members of parliament, doctors, teachers and government officials. They walked around the city in regular clothes, attended university, studied law and medicine, and built successful careers. This wasn't rare or unusual. One of them was Dr. Anakhita Ratebzad. She was elected to parliament in 1965 and became one of Afghanistan's best-known female politicians. She was also a physician who strongly supported women's education and equal rights. But she wasn't the only one. By the 1970s, Afghanistan had a growing class of educated women who had slowly earned an important place in public life. Life was very different outside the cities. In many rural areas, conservative tribal traditions meant most women stayed at home, married at a young age, and never received a formal education. Even so, the country's official direction was changing. Afghanistan's 1964 constitution gave women the right to vote. And by the late 1970s, the communist government in Kabul was pushing girls' education across the country. In some villages, these reforms were even forced on people who strongly opposed them. Everything changed in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the communist government. The war lasted for ten years. More than one million Afghans were killed. And around six million fled the country as refugees. Schools, courts, government offices, and many other institutions that had slowly expanded women's rights were damaged or completely destroyed. When Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989, the fighting didn't end. Instead, the country fell into another civil war. Between 1992 and 1996, the different mujahideen groups that had fought the Soviets turned their weapons against each other. Kabul became one of the main battlefields, and much of the city was destroyed. For women, these years were already a nightmare. Rape was used as a weapon of war. Women were kidnapped from their homes. In areas controlled by fighters loyal to Gulbideen Hekmatyar, a powerful warlord who received support from both the United States and Pakistan at different times, women who appeared in public without full covering risked acid attacks. All of this happened before the Taliban had taken control of a single major city. In 1994, a new group of religious students emerged who promised to end the fighting, restore law and order, and enforce Islamic law across the country. After years of violence and chaos, many ordinary Afghans, including women who were exhausted by the constant war, initially welcomed them. The group's leader was Mullah Mohammad Omar, a former mujahideen fighter who had lost his right eye during the war against the Soviets. He rarely appeared in public, he was almost never photographed, and was deeply committed to his beliefs. In September 1994, Taliban fighters captured Kandahar with almost no resistance. Just two months later, they controlled 12 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. They entered Kabul on September 27, 1996. Within hours, they captured former President Mohammad Najibullah from the United Nations compound where he had lived under protection for four years. He was tortured, castrated, killed, and his body was hanged from a traffic light in the middle of the city. It was a brutal warning of what the new rulers were willing to do. For women, the warning came through a series of new laws announced over the following days. One by one, nearly every freedom they had disappeared. Girls older than eight were immediately banned from going to school. Every girl who had been sitting in a classroom the day before was suddenly told she could no longer continue her education. Women were also fired from government jobs. This wasn't just an administrative decision. Women made up about 70% of Kabul's teachers, 50% of its civil servants, and 40% of its doctors. Removing them caused the city's education system and healthcare system to fall into crisis within weeks. Women were also banned from leaving their homes unless they were accompanied by a mahram, a close male guardian such as husband, father, brother, or son. There were no exceptions. This was especially devastating for the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 widows living in Kabul, many of whom had lost their husbands during 15 years of war. Without a male guardian, they couldn't work, couldn't buy food, visit a doctor, or even move around the city. The Taliban also ordered windows facing the street to be painted black or covered so women inside the house couldn't be seen. Wearing the burqa, a full body covering with a small mesh screen over the eyes, became mandatory whenever women went outside. Many Afghan women had worn the burqa by choice for generations, especially in conservative areas. Under the Taliban, it was no longer a choice. Anyone who refused could be punished immediately. These rules were enforced by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, commonly known as the Morality Police. Its officers patrolled the streets carrying batons. Women were beaten for showing a wrist or an ankle. They were beaten for laughing too loudly. Some were even beaten for wearing shoes that made noise while walking because the Taliban believed women should not draw any attention to themselves, even through the sound of their footsteps. The healthcare system created another deadly problem. Women were forbidden from being treated by male doctors, but many female doctors had already been forced out of their jobs. As a result, thousands of women suffering from infections, pregnancy complications, or other treatable illnesses had nowhere to go. Some died from medical problems that could have been treated in less than an hour at a normal hospital. By 1998, the effects of Taliban rule could be measured. That year, Physicians for Human Rights carried out a major study of women living in Kabul. The results were shocking. 97% of the women surveyed showed signs of major depression, while 71% met the medical standards for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The United Nations estimated that year that around 8,000 women in Kabul alone were suffering from severe psychological trauma. Years of war had already destroyed the economy, but removing women from the workforce made things even worse. Many families had depended on a wife or mother's government salary to survive. Once those jobs disappeared, so did the income that kept entire households alive. But within months of the Taliban taking Kabul, secret schools began appearing across the city. They were hidden in basements, behind closed curtains inside private homes, or disguised as sewing groups and cooking classes. Women and girls would arrive wearing their burqas so they wouldn't attract attention. Once the doors were shut, the books came out and lessons began. Even though education had been banned for girls, children continued learning in secret. One of the main groups behind those schools was the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, better known as RAWA. The organization had been founded in 1977 by Meena Keshwar Kamal, a young women's rights activist who was only 20 years old. She was assassinated in 1987, but the group continued its work throughout the Taliban years. RAWA secretly ran classrooms, helped women, and gathered evidence of Taliban abuses. By 1999, an estimated 30,000 children, most of them girls, were being educated through underground schools in Kabul alone. Any teacher who was caught could be flogged or sent to prison. Some were arrested, but many continued teaching anyway. Women also continued running beauty salons in secret after the Taliban banned them as immoral businesses. Families hid written records of Taliban crimes inside the walls of their homes so the evidence wouldn't be found. British Afghan journalist, Saira Shah, secretly entered Afghanistan and filmed life under Taliban rule for the documentary Beneath the Veil, released in 2001. The film showed public executions, women being beaten in the streets, and interviews with women who spoke in whispers because they feared someone outside might hear them. For many people in the West, it was the first time they had actually seen what life under the Taliban looked like. The international community slowly began responding. By 1997, the Clinton administration had publicly condemned the Taliban's treatment of women. That same year, the Feminist Majority Foundation, led by Eleanor Smeal, launched a major campaign that gathered millions of petition signatures, lobbied American politicians, and pushed the U.S. government to take stronger action. In 1999, the United States imposed economic sanctions on the Taliban. But sanctions did little to change life inside Afghanistan. The first Taliban government didn't fall because of diplomacy or protests. It ended because something happened on a Tuesday morning in September. That day, September 11th in 2001, al-Qaeda carried out terrorist attacks against the United States. After the attacks, the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, who was being sheltered in Afghanistan. That decision quickly sealed the regime's fate. The United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7th, 2001. By November 13th, fighters from the Northern Alliance had entered Kabul. By December, the Taliban had retreated into their strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan, or escaped across the border into Pakistan. For Afghan women, life changed almost overnight. Schools reopened. Women returned to work. On December 22nd, 2001, Khamid Karzai became Afghanistan's interim leader. Seema Samar, a physician who'd spent the Taliban years secretly running underground schools and illegal medical clinics, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women's Affairs. The woman who had once hidden textbooks inside her home was now serving in the country's government. The Bonn Agreement, signed on December 5th, 2001, created the legal foundation for Afghanistan's new government and specifically included protections for women's rights. The new constitution, adopted in 2004, By 2005, women held 27% of the seats in Afghanistan's new parliament, a larger share than women held in the U.S. Congress at the time. The changes continued over the next two decades. By 2010, about 2.7 million girls were attending schools across Afghanistan, compared with almost none during Taliban rule. By 2020, that number had grown to around 3.5 million. Life expectancy increased from about 45 years in 2001 to 66 years by 2019. The number of women dying during childbirth dropped by more than half over the same period. Women became judges, police officers, pilots, and mayors. Shabana Basir Rasik, who had secretly attended an underground school as a child during Taliban rule, went on to found Afghanistan's first girls' boarding school, Sola, in 2008. She became one of the best-known symbols of how much the country had changed. The 20 years between 2001 and 2021 were not simply a success story that suddenly ended. During the war, the United States and its allies spent about $2.26 trillion in Afghanistan. A large amount of that money disappeared through corruption, dishonest contracts, and theft inside the Afghan government. On paper, the Afghan National Security Forces had around 300,000 soldiers, but many of those troops were ghost soldiers who didn't actually exist. Corrupt commanders kept collecting their salaries while pocketing the money themselves. At the same time, the Taliban quietly built a parallel government in many rural parts of Afghanistan. They collected taxes from poppy farmers, controlled important trade routes, and operated their own courts. Many villagers, frustrated by corruption in the official government, actually preferred using Taliban courts to settle disputes. The Taliban also never stopped fighting. Every year, they killed Afghan soldiers, police officers, and civilians. They also focused on women who had become symbols of the country's progress. Safia Ahmadjan, the head of Kandahar's Department of Women's Affairs, was assassinated in 2006. Sitara Achakzai, a provincial council member and outspoken supporter of women's rights, was shot outside her home on April 12, 2009. Female journalists, teachers, judges, police officers, and other professional women were targeted again and again. It was a deliberate campaign to scare women away from public life by showing what could happen to anyone who stepped forward. The Afghan government also had serious failures. The Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women passed in 2009, made child marriage and domestic violence illegal. But laws meant very little if they weren't enforced. A United Nations report published in 2016 found that 87% of Afghan women had experienced at least one form of gender-based violence during their lives. Outside the cities, many girls were still forced into marriage. Some were promised to much older men when they were only six years old in exchange for bride prices paid to their families. Even with all these problems, something important had still been built. A whole generation of girls grew up without ever living under Taliban rule. To them, going to school felt normal, not dangerous. Zafira Ghaffari became mayor of Maidan Shahr in 2018 when she was only 26 years old. She survived three assassination attempts, but continued going to work. That was the Afghanistan that still existed in 2020. Then came Doha. On February 29, 2020, the United States signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. The Afghan government was not included in the negotiations. Women's rights groups were also left out. Under the agreement, the United States promised to withdraw all of its troops, while the Taliban promised not to give safe haven to terrorist groups and to take part in peace talks with the Afghan government. The Taliban quickly resumed attacking Afghan government forces, arguing that their ceasefire only applied to American troops. Peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government began in Doha in September 2020 and made almost no progress. The Taliban gave up very little because they believed time was on their side. In April 2021, President Joe Biden confirmed that all American troops would leave Afghanistan by September. Everyone understood what that meant, including U.S. intelligence officials, Afghan leaders and the Taliban. Taliban fighters began capturing districts across the country during May and June. American intelligence believed that the Afghan government could survive for six months to two years after the withdrawal. Instead, Kabul fell on Sunday, August 15, 2021, less than four months later. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country by helicopter, reportedly carrying bags of cash. Within hours, the Afghan government had collapsed. In the days before Kabul fell, many women rushed to erase the lives they'd spent 20 years building. They burned their university degrees, destroyed photographs showing them at work, deleted records from their computers and phones, and painted over beauty salon signs during the night. Activists desperately called anyone who might help them escape. Some succeeded. Zafira Ghaffari left Afghanistan on August 18. Most women had no connections, no paperwork, and no time. The scenes at Kabul's airport soon became some of the most recognizable images of the decade. Tens of thousands of people crowded around the gates, hoping to escape before it was too late. At least seven people died in the rush. Videos of desperate people falling from American military aircraft after trying to cling to the outside spread around the world within hours. Between August 14 and August 30, the U.S.-led evacuation airlifted about 123,000 people out of Afghanistan. But an unknown number of those who needed to leave the most were left behind. Two days after taking Kabul on August 17, 2021, the Taliban held a press conference. Their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told journalists from around the world that the Taliban had changed. He said women would be allowed to work and study within the framework of Islamic law. He also promised that there'd be no revenge against former enemies. His words sounded calm and moderate. It didn't last. Within days, women arriving at government offices were told to go home and stay there until further notice. On September 7, 2021, the Taliban announced their new government. Not a single woman was given a cabinet position. The Ministry of Women's Affairs, which had existed since 2001, was abolished. In its place, the Taliban brought back the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the same morality police that had enforced their strict rules during the 1990s. On September 17, secondary schools reopened across most of Afghanistan. But only for boys. Girls above 6th grade were told to wait for another announcement. Families waited for months. Finally, March 23, 2022, was announced as the days girls could return to high school. That morning, thousands of girls and teachers arrived at their schools only to find the gates locked. Overnight, Taliban Supreme Leader Khaybatullah Khunzada, who rarely appears in public and rules mainly from Kandahar, had cancelled the reopening. Reports suggested that some Taliban leaders had supported reopening the schools. But his decision overruled them all. Another major blow came on December 20, 2022, when the Taliban banned women from attending universities. Thousands of female students who were already studying for degrees were suddenly told their education was over. The order also included another rule. If women at a university were not following Taliban requirements, male students could also be prevented from attending. The policy was meant to pressure men and their families into supporting the restrictions placed on women. That same month, women were also banned from working for non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. This created a huge humanitarian problem. Aid organizations employed thousands of Afghan women. And female aid workers were often the only people allowed to reach women who needed food, health care, and other assistance because of strict gender segregation. In April 2023, the Taliban extended the ban to Afghan women working for the United Nations. The result was severe disruption to aid operations at a time when the UN estimated that 28.3 million Afghans depended on humanitarian assistance just to survive. The restrictions continued growing. Women were once again banned from parks, gyms, and beauty salons. Female voices slowly disappeared from radio broadcasts. Some women still protested in Kabul during August and September 2021, despite the danger. Many of them were beaten, arrested, or taken away. The women who managed to escape Afghanistan after August 2021 are now spread across Europe, North America, and the Gulf countries. From abroad, many continue speaking about what's happening inside Afghanistan, even though they can no longer change events directly.