The Taliban War on Women

Why in News?

• The Taliban recently announced blanket ban on education for women at universities with immediate effect, making it the only country in the world where women are denied access to education.
• In addition to the actions against women citizens, the Taliban has brought back public flogging and execution, belying hopes that current Taliban regime would be different from the one of 1996-2001.
• The article, thus points to the Taliban plunging back into the regressive, authoritarian, misogynistic rule that was the hallmark of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s in line with Sharia law.

 

Background

• A month after they took power, the Taliban first imposed a ban on girls attending secondary schools in 2021, calling it a “temporary suspension.”
• Girls started attending “courses” in fee-charging private schools and madrassas held “Islami” classes for girls and network of underground “secret” schools also sprang up.
• Taliban foreign ministry in 2022 said that despite the cultural constraints, budgetary constraints, lack of resources, infrastructure, teachers and books, Taliban’s policy remains education for all Afghan citizens irrespective of gender.
• It also accused the international community of “weaponising” women’s education against the Taliban regime and reiterated that girls had access to secondary education in 31 out of its 34 provinces.
• Women could previously attend colleges and universities, which the Taliban had segregated with gendered alterations to the timetable as well, but now the Taliban's below moves have resulted in the blanket refusal of education to women:
  • Women teachers have been barred from working in a certain profession, including medicine and law enforcement.
  • In most government departments, female employees were requested to take a wage cut and come in once a week to be counted as present.
• The invisibilisation of women by the Taliban is now gathering pace as they were also banned from visiting most public parks, hamams (place of public bathing), and gymnasiums and stopping them from wearing makeup recently.

 

What is the Global response to Taliban’s actions?

• Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan, the three countries that recognised the 1996-2001 Taliban regime (not done so this time) have condemned the ban.
• Turkey, Qatar, and Indonesia have also questioned the ban calling the ban on women education against Islam.
• The G7 foreign ministers also issued a joint statement against the Taliban decision with Germany warning that Taliban’s “gender persecution may amount to a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, to which Afghanistan is a State Party”.
• Also, countries like India, China, Russia, Pakistan, the US (through Qatar), etc., though engaged with Taliban, but has made preconditions to grant it recognition as follows:
  • Giving girls and women equal access to education.
  • Forming an inclusive and representative government.

 

The Taliban appears unconcerned

• The Taliban though desperate for international recognition, are unwilling to fulfill the conditions for it.
• They are weighing the limits to leverage the international community and deriving benefits from geopolitical rivalries and the race among regional powers for influence in Afghanistan.
• Taliban is also ardent on its path, given the limited nature of the choice for the international community has between starving Afghans and punishing the Taliban.
  • UN Emergency Relief Coordinator recently revealed that 20 million Afghans faced acute hunger, and millions more were directly and critically dependent on international aid, thus cutting aid to Afghanistan was not an option.
  • Russia and China successfully pushed for an exemption in the UN sanctions regime last year to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Afghanistan.

 

India’s engagement with Taliban

• India also reiterated its commitment to an “inclusive and representative” government that respects the rights of all Afghans, ensures the equal rights of women to participate in all aspects of Afghan society, including access to higher education.
• However, security is the key driver of India’s engagement with the Taliban owing to the following reasons:
  • Other than ISIS and al-Qaeda, Pakistani-origin terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are reportedly present in Afghanistan.
  • At the recent UNSC briefing, India pointed to the presence of 60 UN-sanctioned individuals in the Taliban “cabinet” and senior positions in the regime.
  • India (chair of the Taliban sanctions committee) also pointed to close links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
• Thus, India’s presence in Kabul will somehow ensure that Afghan soil is not used against India.
• Also, owing to recent tensed relations between Taliban and Pakistan, India has an opportunity to retrieve some lost influence in Afghanistan, owing to goodwill generated by her projects like
  • Afghan Parliament,
  • The Zaranj-Delaram Highway, and
  • The Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) in the past.

 

Restoring people-to-people links

• India’s biggest strength in Afghanistan remains the friendship of the Afghan people, that India failed to utilise.
• India can step forward now by responding to desperate pleas from Afghans for visas, amongst whom are hundreds of women with no education or career prospects in their own country.

 

Conclusion

• With the West busy with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, resulting in an economic and geopolitical crisis and little internal pressures, the Taliban regime believes it can infringe on citizens' rights, particularly women's rights, with impunity.
• The international community's restrictions in such a circumstance must be recognised and addressed quickly in multilateral fora.

 

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Q1) What are the five types of Sharia rules?

The Sharia regulates all human actions and puts them into five categories: obligatory, recommended, permitted, neuatral and forbidden.

 

Q2) How many major ethnic groups are there in Afghanistan?

In Article 4 of Afghanistan's constitution, 14 ethnic groups are mentioned: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkman, Baluch, Pachaie, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Qirghiz, Qizilbash, Gujur, Brahwui and Other Tribes. The first five groups are large communities and play a prominent role in the country's political life.

 

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Source: The Afghan war and the myth of women's rights