Afghanistan has remained in the dark shadows of war since 1979. The USSR ended the Cold War in 1989 after the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. The imposed war on Afghanistan has caused the entire country to suffer multidimensional crises and millions of people fled to neighboring countries like Pakistan, Iran, and the Central Asian states. Specifically, women’s rights are extremely violated.
Historically, after the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan people were drowned into another misfortune when civil war took place between warlords and mujahideen, which resulted in the appearance of the Taliban to take control over Afghanistan. It is reported that many civilians had lost their lives at the hands of the Taliban, Sharia law was imposed and basic human rights were violated. Those who suffered the most in Afghanistan were the female gender, and that increased the population of widows, orphan daughters, and sisters that had lost their relatives in the war against the USSR and the aftermath by the Taliban.
Policy recommendations must include women empowerment regulations as an integral part of Taliban “Islamic rule” in Afghanistan. UN Women, as per its charter, must work for advancing women’s empowerment and rights, addressing discrimination and violence, and promoting sustainable socio-economic development towards achieving women’s rights in Afghanistan. UN Women must initiate collaborative efforts for Afghan women inclusion in the national political model and must be endorsed by the Taliban. The rights of education, decent work, extension of health facilities, recognition of their due social status and above all the preservation of women rights as per true spirit of the Islamic rules must be constitutionally protected for Afghan women in any sort of political regime in Afghanistan
Women education was affected most, during the Taliban regime of the 1990s, reducing girls’ enrollment in and graduation from schools, colleges, and universities in Afghanistan. Even modern education for women was banned due to strictly implementing the so-called Islamic laws in some areas in Afghanistan. and schools had a record reduced number of students at that time. In that war-torn country, women were mostly deprived of basic health facilities, equal status in society and politics, women were prosecuted in public places, they faced family members disappearing and faced social and psychological unrest in Afghanistan. The socio-emotional costs inflicted on women include their disrespect, tagging their character, othering them in social norms, marginalizing them in social, economic and political spheres of life.
By nature, and biological compositions, females are more sensitive than males, are peace-loving, caring for their families and rearing sibling gs of their families, and binding sources of familial structures in human societies. Yet, their associations and sentimental beings face much suffering during or after the wars. In Afghanistan, women have been suffering for decades.
The examples of Afghan women migrants choosito cross borders and miserably live in Pakistan and Iran in refugee camps without basic amenities of life, are glaring evidences of the plight suffered by Afghan women in wars.
Similarly, the impacts of 9/11 on Afghan women did not prove different. The US and NATO forces brought Afghanistan into a disastrous war. Wars never bring peace. Afghan people displaced inside or even migrated out of the country, leaving their homes, properties, businesses, and relatives, again affecting women to a higher extent. The honourable families of Afghan people were disrespected and humiliated in various locations and their destinations both inside and outside Afghanistan.
Afghan women started beggary and other humiliating professions so as to earn a livelihood for themselves and their kids and weak families across Pakistan, Iran, and neighbouring countries. No country had designed humanitarian programmes for uplifting the socio-economic status of refugees, set aside for Afghan refugee women. Women again lagged behind in education, health, sanitation, social status, dignity, pride, respect and their role in daily lives both inside and outside of Afghanistan.
Even theUN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and humanitarian organizations did not work for the socioeconomic development of Afghan women. It’s the Afghan women who were left in the lurch without assistance. The plight of Afghan women has not stopped there. It is continuing to decline and the voices of the weak Afghan women are never noticed by great powers that labelled themselves the best democracies and champions of human and women rights in the global press.
The miserable statuses of hunger, fear, lawlessness, no shelter, social displacement and economically backwardness are the current state of the lives of Afghan women. Life is not easy for Afghan women at all in this current situation of war-torn Afghanistan.
With the recent development of the Taliban capturing Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan, the hopes for women empowerment have likely diminished with the US troops’ withdrawal and the extinction of the Afghan national government from Afghanistan. Afghan women will suffer again from not recognizing women rights by the probable Taliban implementation of “Islamic rule” in Afghanistan. The evidences of hunger, fear, disrespect, non-permission to work, ban on women in public places, education ban and dismantling co-education system in educational institutes, no selection of a woman member in the interim Taliban cabinet, and many more human rights violations are some of the examples that will make Afghan women more suffer in Afghanistan.
Policy recommendations must include women empowerment regulations as an integral part of Taliban “Islamic rule” in Afghanistan. UN Women, as per its charter, must work for advancing women’s empowerment and rights, addressing discrimination and violence, and promoting sustainable socio-economic development towards achieving women’s rights in Afghanistan. UN Women must initiate collaborative efforts for Afghan women inclusion in the national political model and must be endorsed by the Taliban. The rights of education, decent work, extension of health facilities, recognition of their due social status and above all the preservation of women rights as per true spirit of the Islamic rules must be constitutionally protected for Afghan women in any sort of political regime in Afghanistan.
