Four years have gone by since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, when they seized power in August 2021. Slowly but steadily, the rights of Afghan women and girls continue to be eroded, effectively erasing them from society and public life.
By Linda Bordoni
The most recent Taliban directive sees a nationwide internet shutdown that has grounded planes, impacted many essential services – including banking and payments – and access to online education, a lifeline for many women and girls who are now unable to even learn from home, where they are hidden from view and prohibited from singing if anyone outside can hear.
Since the takeover of the Taliban de facto leaders, dozens of directives have been issued stripping women and girls of their rights, from education and work to their movement and public decision-making.
Girls are banned from secondary school. Women are barred from universities, most jobs, and public spaces such as parks, gyms, and sports clubs.
Afghan women were even reportedly left to die in the wake of the country’s 6.6 magnitude earthquake at the end of August because of Taliban rules forbidding unrelated men from having contact with them.
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has urged the Taliban to restore internet and telecommunications access across the country, saying the blackout, which is part of the government’s professed crackdown on immorality, has left the nation almost entirely cut off from the outside world.
The U.N. stated that such restrictions further erode freedom of expression and the right to information. It also noted that telecommunications are crucial during disasters in the country, which is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Opressed Afghan women, meanwhile, appear not only to have lost their last lifeline with the outside world, but the possibility of reading, listening to music, receiving information, nurturing their dreams.
(Source: various news agencies)
