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Last month the Taliban published a new consolidated code of religious laws. It has left Afghan women reeling, with many now searching for ways to leave. It also has implications for the Taliban’s quest for legitimacy and relations with the world. Three years after America’s withdrawal from the country, the situation in Afghanistan looks worse than ever.
Even before the announcement in late August, women were banned from attending secondary schools, universities, parks and female-only spaces such as beauty salons. They were not allowed to work in most professions. Now they are banned from raising their voices or reciting the Koran in public. They are prohibited from looking at any man other than their relatives, and have to cover their faces fully.
Nasiba (not her real name), a 28-year-old midwife in Badghis, in the north-west of the country, says that after three years under the Taliban she feels “a sense of hopelessness, loneliness”. When she leaves the house, she does so “with fear, shaking, that someone might say something to me or stop me”. Some women have reacted to the latest announcement by reducing how much they go out; others ensure they are never alone outside. Amina, a widow in Kabul, the capital, locks her daughter and son inside. Her children eat once a day, if at all: “If there’s food they eat, if not they wait.”
The new religious code is a “pivotal moment”, says Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, who is barred from the country by the Taliban. He wants “gender apartheid” to be considered a crime against humanity. Activists want the Taliban to be tried at the International Criminal Court (Afghanistan has signed up to the Rome statute). That seems unlikely. Outrage in the West has been muted, not least as many are distracted by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s choice to be permanent representative to the United Nations, says the new code was introduced to “limit” the powers of the morality police, who have become more present in the country. Mr Shaheen insists that the law banning women from speaking outside had been “misinterpreted”. He says that the Taliban has issued thousands of licences for women interpreters. The ban applied to women singing at large gatherings of men, he claims. He adds that women can study midwifery or go to a religious school.
That is of little comfort to many women. Nasiba says that she has started to think about leaving the country, mostly for the sake of her ten-year-old daughter but also of her five-year-old son, who admires the Taliban. “He sees [the Taliban] at the shopping centre, he sees their rangers and wants to take a photo...maybe he’ll become a Talib,” she says, with a grim laugh. “When there’s no education...no computer classes, or English, just religious education, what else is he going to become?”