![]() It’s painful to look back on that moment and think about the decisions that were made in response to Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States-President George W. I was against war, but I did feel like I cared about Afghan women. I understood very clearly that we were being told that we had to invade Afghanistan to rescue these women. Then we started seeing images of Afghan women in fluttering blue burqas on the news every day and everyone was talking about Taliban abuses against women. We could all feel that war was coming but we didn’t know where. Three days later I went to a peace vigil in Union Square. Suddenly we were all glued to the news, all day and all night. I watched the Twin Towers fall from the roof of my apartment building in Manhattan’s East Village. I would have struggled to find Afghanistan on a map. Like a lot of Americans, I didn’t pay much attention to international news. Heather: I was a young lawyer working with prisoners in New York City. I am continually amazed that the US claims the moral authority to question other countries, but almost no one gets to hold the US accountable for its failed promises.Īs a Western woman, how did you first hear about women’s rights in Afghanistan? It gives you a sense that Afghanistan is one among many US colonial adventures. Second, if I believed that the US and its allies were the saviors of Afghan women, it would have evoked some feeling of betrayal in me.īut reflecting on the sentence, it is clear to me that it comes from an imperialist and colonial world view that not only pictures Afghan women as passive beings but paints the US and the West more broadly as the ultimate moral authority setting up a good example in Afghanistan for other nations to follow. First, it sounds like a decent campaign slogan, which is not particular to the US, and it’s very clear now that it is a failed one. Heather: In November 2001, then US Senator Hillary Clinton wrote: “By empowering women with the freedom to choose their own future, we can help Afghanistan become a symbol for people elsewhere who have yet to share in the opportunities provided when human rights include women’s rights.” I’d love to hear your reflections on that statement, today, in 2022. We need to take stock of how this happened and what 20 years of Western promises to always stand by Afghan women mean now. This is life for women and girls under the Taliban 2.0, in 2022. They abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and handed over the building to the reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, responsible for some of the worst abuses against women during the Taliban’s previous time in power, from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban appointed an all-male cabinet. Women’s sports are banned and there are new barriers to women obtaining health care. Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have systematically dismantled the system designed to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, including closing almost all shelters for women and girls. The Taliban have ordered women to cover their faces in public, including women journalists reporting on television. Rules requiring women to have a mahram with them have been imposed for women travelling long distances or leaving the country. ![]() The policy of requiring a mahram, a male family member chaperone, to accompany any woman leaving her home, has not been officially stated, but Taliban officials on the street are often enforcing it, as well as harassing women about their clothing. Many female teachers have been dismissed. ![]() Women in universities face harsh new restrictions. Girls are banned from secondary education in the vast majority of Afghanistan’s provinces. ©2022/AP Photos/Oriane Zerah/Abaca/Sipa USA Afghan women demonstrate against violations of their rights in the center of Kabul, Afghanistan, August 13, 2022.
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