Afghanistan, under the Taliban, is again in the headlines across the world for the wrong reason. After a nation-wide ban on female education, the Taliban has recently issued an edict on the working of female employees at local and international NGOs across Afghanistan.
This announcement of forbidding women employment comes at a time when the hardliner is pledging the world for international recognition and appealing to the immediate neighbours, Islamic nations in the Middle East, and the West for financial and other support.
Such an aggressive and inhumane act by the Taliban establishes the fact that they will be in the power corridor on their own terms. And, such decrees issued by them nullify any hope for changes in their code of conduct and policies.
Hence countries like India that are known to be the largest regional contributor in Afghanistan's reconstruction have been waiting and observing, instead of directly dealing with the Taliban.
Many NGOs and INGos are all-women-run in Afghanistan, where the female population is almost half of its total population. Entities like Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières rely on their female workforce in the war-torn nation. If the NGOs can't function, it's feared that many children and women will die.
There are also some academic institutions which are completely female run. Several university owners have warned that many educational institutions will be forced to close if female students are not attending.
Not just dreams of the female population but also the lives of millions of females are now uncertain amid the implementation of this harsh law. In the war-torn nation, thousands are living in poverty and several other females have traumatic experiences from early marriage and adolescent pregnancy.
Despite their pathetic condition and poor resources, the Taliban has made it very clear that they will stick to their radical and defiant stances. The Taliban during their first tenure in the 1990s imposed terrible harsh restrictions on women. The women were deprived of attending school or university and barred for seeking employment.
Before assuming power in 2021, the Taliban promised that they would not curb the rights of women. Now they have made it very clear that they will stick to their own norms and own interpretation of their religion.
In the past, Taliban were notorious for the persecution of women as well as minorities like Hazara or Tajiks. But time has changed. A new generation of Afghans are much more different than the Afghans they ruled in the 1990s.
The youths have experienced social media and modern technological developments. The literacy rate has grown and more Afghans started packing their bags for India, Europe, or the US. During the presidency of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, Afghans went to vote.
The contemporary Afghans, who are living in Afghanistan, can't be forced. Resistance has grown and will grow gradually in provinces beyond Kabul.
As the Taliban has created a miserable condition for the women already, there's no hope for an inclusive government that the world desires and demands. Soon after capturing Kabul, the Taliban in September 2021 declared gender-segregated classrooms and announced that teachers of the same sex or old men should teach them. Wearing a Hijab was a compulsion.
At a time when the Taliban was pleading for de-freezing the reserve money, and the entire world was expecting a change in their attitude, in March 2022 , the Taliban ordered high school attending girls to stay home and closed the doors of their classrooms.
In May, Hibatullah Akhunzada, the supreme leader of the armed group, ordered women to fully cover themselves, including their faces, in public and generally stay at home. A male family member escort was made mandatory for inter-city travel in Afghanistan.
In August 2022, women agitators who were chanting “bread, work, and freedom,” were beaten outside the education ministry in Kabul. Later, women were forbidden from entering parks, fairs, and gyms.
This is also to remember that many Taliban leaders have sent their daughters abroad to pursue higher studies. The way the Taliban is interpreting Islam and acting upon them is dangerous. This is highly annoying for the Islamic societies in South Asia, the Middle East, and members of the OIC nations. Islamic scholars like Ahmed El-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar University, have condemned such decrees forbidding female education in Afghanistan.
By creating a more gender segregated society, Taliban may appear to not lose anything, at least for the time being, but it is Afghanistan that will lose a shining generation.
Ayanangsha Maitra is an Indian journalist.
