An Afghan burka-clad woman sits beside a girl, as they look for alms along a street in the Fayzabad district of Badakhshan province on Nov. 16, 2023.OMER ABRAR/AFP/Getty Images
Afghanistan is the most prime and pitiful example that it’s eminently possible to go backward, especially for women.
In 2021, the world witnessed the chaotic United States withdrawal from the country, and those in the know feared the worst as the Taliban filled the void. In the three years since, the Taliban 2.0 has brought Afghanistan back three decades, especially for girls and women.
There is a recent twist to the deranged rules. Amongst the child marriages, floggings and stonings, a ban on school past Grade 6, the end of work and socializing or doing much of anything in the public sphere, women have now literally been silenced.
Last month, the Taliban released a detailed list of vice and virtue edicts that formally outlaw the sound of a woman’s voice in public, even if it carries from inside her home.
It seems it’s always one step forward, two steps back for Afghan women. It’s a country that saw some progress in the last half of the 20th century – the 1970s, for instance, saw women hold a significant number of post-secondary student spots and public sector jobs.
The Soviet invasion in 1979 brought war and strife, and then women’s rights were stripped away in the 1990s with the Taliban’s radical interpretation of Islam. By the end of 1996, the group had taken over two-thirds of the country – creating a regime in which al-Qaeda was given sanctuary and misogyny ran amok.
After the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. and an international coalition invaded Afghanistan to obliterate al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban. There was more war and violence for the country, but schools for girls re-opened in 2002.
During my travels in Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces and local fixers in 2007 (reporting on the mission and the war for a different newspaper), things were supposed to be improving.
But the desperation of the women still haunts me: The burka-clad mother who begged for money and food on the streets of Kabul; the Kandahar farm wives who hid themselves from view as soon as me and the boys from Valcartier pulled up to their family’s shacks; the 11-year-old with internal injuries – the youngest wife – inside a new domestic violence shelter in Herat.
“I cannot see a woman suffering,” activist Suraya Pakzad told me then, as the little girl clung to her arm.
“We are half of the population of the world. We are created by the same God.”
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So much progress is held back by endless war, and the overwhelming poverty of the place: It’s a country where subsistence farming in the rocky soil, illiteracy, and children dying from malnutrition grinds so many down.
And economically, the situation is as dire as ever. The Council on Foreign Relations says Afghanistan’s economy has shrunk by as much as 30 per cent since 2021, and more than 90 per cent of the total 40-million-person country – a population about the same as Canada’s – suffers from some sort of food insecurity.
There’s little shelter for the women and girls of Afghanistan now. And there’s less hope than there was two decades ago when, amidst the War on Terror, Afghan women also became a global priority – for a spell.
Now, the world can’t focus on any one thing. Or doesn’t know where to look. The severity and horror of wars in Ukraine and Gaza take international attention away from the land-locked country in south-central Asia. Taliban leaders are counting on this. And China is still a willing investor and diplomatic partner.
But beyond the human suffering, if the West ignores Afghanistan, we risk the desperation of the place boiling over, once again. As now-in-exile former Afghan cabinet minister Nargis Nehan said: “You will see more extremism and more security threats coming from Afghanistan. So, gradually the world will pay attention.”
Canada is invested. We were in Afghanistan alongside the U.S. and other allies. During our country’s 12-year mission there, 158 Canadian Armed Forces members, a diplomat, four aid workers, a government contractor and a journalist were killed – including our dear colleague and friend, the Calgary Herald’s brilliant Michelle Lang.
It’s hard to see a path to help the women of Afghanistan while the world is so otherwise occupied, and without also bolstering the Taliban. What we can do is find new ways to get aid to women and children, and to go around the country’s current rulers to other groups whenever possible. Either by isolation, persuasion or arm-twisting, the world needs to make clear the status quo is abhorrent.
As hard as it is to look, and to listen, the world cannot shrug and accept that the 1990s are back for Afghan women.