Gender Politics in Afghanistan
August 25, 2021
What is the Taliban’s Definition of Freedom and Women’s Rights?
This paper examines the contested and changing gender politics in Afghanistan, largely focusing on the recent issues. After the attacks of September 11th, 2001 the plight of women under Taliban rule was widely publicized in the United States as a humanitarian issue. Afghanistan has suffered conflict and domination for centuries. Recently, with the US presence decreasing, the Taliban begins sending fighters to government holdouts. When President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, Taliban soon entered the capital city of Kabul, effectively taking control of the country. After the government collapsed there has been a constant fear looming in the country of Taliban reimposing the kind of brutal rule that eliminated basic rights of people in Afghanistan, especially women.
Did you know that it is a common practice for girls to live their lives disguised as boys in Afghanistan? Why so? Bacha posh is a practice in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, following which some families without sons will pick a daughter to live and behave as a boy. These are women who disguise themselves as men to fight and to be protected during periods of wartime. This practice is a result of the conservative practices adopted by the Taliban earlier when they were in power. Girls were always looked down upon and being one was made very difficult. They had to learn to protect themselves and these practices were then being adopted by families and women themselves for protection and a sense of freedom and liberty. This practice reveals the powerful gender ideology around which the Afghan society is organised, illustrating the formidable coping strategy of the Afghans in general.
Afghan women have always had to deal with the norms that decades of war, destitution and displacement have brought about and the Taliban again taking control over the country can now make these norms even more rigid. In the recent reports flooding in, it can be seen how people, including women and children are being treated at the airports who are trying to flee the country. Recently, a small group of Afghan women staged a protest in front of the Taliban fighters, in Kabul for the first time after the Taliban seized into power. Women and girls in Afghanistan are fighting against all odds to not lose the freedom that they have worked so hard for. In Afghanistan now, the posters of women with uncovered heads are being defaced, women were being asked to cover themselves from head to toe, and men were reportedly forced to shave their heads. Women reporters are covering themselves up, wearing burqas an protecting themselves in a way that they did not have to do earlier in Afghanistan. The current situation in Afghanistan has caught women in a state of tension between their demands for gender equality and the need for protecting themselves.
The Taliban has been saying that women will have their rights according to the ‘Sharia Law.’ Interpretation of the ‘Sharia Law’ differs from one Muslim country to another. In Taliban controlled Afghanistan people were subjugated to strict interpretation of the ‘Sharia Law’- women were being banned from work and subjugated to severe punishments. Under this law women are judged as secondary to men, having fewer freedom and more obligations. Concealment of whole body except for the face and hands are seen as ways of preserving morality. To guard women’s honour they were being kept locked up, isolated from the society. The question then arises what is really Taliban’s definition of Freedom and Women’s Rights?
