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The Taliban is erasing Afghan women

Afghanistan's ‘window ban’ speaks to the relentless misogyny of Islamism.

Candice Holdsworth

Topics Feminism World

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Somehow, the Taliban is still finding new ways to make life worse for the women of Afghanistan. Since their return to power in 2021, Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers have systematically erased women from public life through draconian restrictions on their education and freedom of movement. They have even banned women from speaking outside of their homes. Now, in a new and monstrous development, the Taliban has decided to ban windows in residential buildings to stop women from being seen while they’re at home.

According to a decree issued in December, and posted on X by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, new buildings must not have windows where it is possible to see ‘the courtyard, kitchen, neighbour’s well and other places usually observed by women’. By the Taliban’s twisted reasoning, even glimpsing at women through windows might lead to ‘obscene acts’.

The ‘window ban’ wasn’t the only misogynistic law Afghanistan’s government passed in December. It also made it illegal for NGOs operating in Afghanistan to employ women. According to the BBC, the Taliban justified the ban on the grounds that some women had been caught working without hijabs.

To counter the Taliban’s barbaric attitude towards women, human-rights advocates have suggested imposing a boycott on the Afghan national cricket team – similar to the sporting sanctions imposed on South Africa during the Apartheid era. Some have mooted even stricter sanctions. Meanwhile, travel bans have already been imposed on senior members of the Taliban – although, due to exemptions offered by the UN Security Council, these have, so far, had a limited effect.

Threatening sanctions and boycotts against Afghanistan might make some in the West feel good about themselves. But there is little reason to think that ostracising the national cricket side, or imposing even stricter sanctions, would do anything to improve the lot of Afghan women and girls.

The stark truth is there is very little Western powers can do. The US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, from 2001 until the calamitous withdrawal 20 years later, will be fresh in the memory of most Afghans. The Taliban, which was able to reclaim Kabul in a matter of days in 2021, doesn’t care how its laws are received in the West.

The influence of wokeness and identity politics in the West has also undermined any potential solidarity with Afghan women. Political and cultural elites have happily attacked Western nations for colonialism and ‘systemic racism’, while denouncing any criticism of non-Western nations as a form of cultural imperialism or even bigotry. As a result, the degradation of women under the Taliban regime goes on without any sustained condemnation.

Despite its repeated human-rights abuses and medieval worldview, the Taliban might even have reason to be cautiously optimistic. In October, Russia began pushing for sanctions to be lifted. China looks set to extend its Belt and Road initiative into Afghan territory, too. The UN, while refusing to recognise the Taliban, sends significant amounts of aid to Afghanistan. Although far from flourishing, these militant reactionaries may yet have good reason to think they can prosper.

The prospect of protracted and even strengthened Taliban control over Afghanistan should cause some serious self-reflection among the Western elites who allowed this state of affairs to transpire. They spent nearly two decades trying, in vain, to impose a secular democracy on Afghanistan. Then, in their desperation to withdraw, they blindly accepted the Taliban’s lies about being a reformed movement.

The reality has been grotesque, but sadly predictable. As has the Western silence that has greeted the persecution of Afghanistan’s women.

Candice Holdsworth is a writer. Visit her website here.

Picture by: Getty.

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