Standing With Afghan Women

After an earthquake in Herat, Afghanistan, October 2023 Ali Khara / Reuters RINA AMIRI is co-founder of The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights in the Biden administration. Share & Download Print unlock this feature or Sign in. Save Sign in and save to read later Copy This is a subscriber-only feature. or Sign in. Chicago MLA APSA APA Chicago Cite not available at the moment MLA Cite not available at the moment APSA Cite not available at the moment APA Cite not available at the moment Request reprint permissions here. Yet even in these draconian conditions, Afghan women have continued to fight for their rights, meeting the Taliban’s repression with extraordinary acts of courage. Within weeks of the group’s return to power, scores of women marched through the streets of Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, and other cities to demand that the Taliban reverse their newly introduced restrictions. The UN has documented the Taliban’s brutal response to these demonstrations, which has included arbitrary arrests of protesters and their families, enforced disappearances, rape, torture, and other forms of intimidation and violence. Yet women activists have remained defiant, and at times they have drawn support from men. In June of this year, women and men in Herat took to the streets to protest the detention of at least 30 women for allegedly violating the Taliban-imposed dress code. According to Human Rights Watch, Taliban security forces responded with beatings, shots into the crowd, detentions of protesters, and the killing of at least one boy. As the Taliban have intensified their repression, women have found new ways to continue nonviolent resistance. Women’s groups have become more decentralized and clandestine. As during the first Taliban regime in the 1990s, women activists have organized underground schools to educate girls denied access to formal classrooms. Women who have been shut out of the professional careers they enjoyed before 2021 have mobilized to offer services that the Taliban eliminated. They have opened their own small business and informal enterprises, and they are negotiating with local Taliban officials and community leaders to allow them to keep those businesses operating, to run educational programs, and to provide access to health care and other basic services. Afghan women are also working closely with UN offices, international human rights organizations, and legal experts to document human rights abuses and preserve evidence of arbitrary detentions and gender-based violence.