Women
The Taliban government has been severely criticised for not respecting the rights of women. Women were forced to wear Burqa of a specified length, and even minor deviations could result in punishment in public. Quite often, women were beaten with thin sticks at the ankles for wearing burqas that were "too short". Women were prohibited from leaving their homes, unless they were completely covered. No part of their faces, hair or body was to be shown out in the public.
The education of women suffered too. Girls were deprived of basic education, and higher education was next to none in the Taliban rule.
A member of the Taliban's religious police beating a woman in Kabul on August 26, 2001; photograph taken from footage filmed by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) [1]. The footage can be seen here.- The lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghan women and children have been shattered in the human rights catastrophe that has devastated Afghanistan. Thousands have been killed in artillery attacks apparently aimed deliberately at residential areas by the various political factions who have been fighting for territory since April 1992 when the Mujahideen groups took power. Thousands of others have been wounded Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
- Armed groups have massacred defenceless women in their homes, or have brutally beaten and raped them. Scores of young women have been abducted and then raped, taken as wives by commanders or sold into prostitution. Some have committed suicide to avoid such a fate. Scores of women have reportedly "disappeared" and several have been stoned to death. Hundreds of thousands of women and children have been displaced or are living as refugees abroad. Many are traumatized by the horrific abuses they have suffered or witnessed. Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
- These gross human rights violations of so many unarmed civilian women have been committed with total impunity. The Constitution has been suspended. Laws have become meaningless. The judicial structures have been destroyed. The central authorities have become virtually defunct. As a result, there has been little prospect of any of the perpetrators being brought to justice Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
- Alongside these appalling abuses, women have been prevented from exercising several of their fundamental rights -- including the rights to association, freedom of expression and employment -- by Mujahideen groups who consider such activities to be un-Islamic for women. For instance, Mujahideen guards are reported to have stopped women from working outside their homes, or from attending health and family planning courses organized by non-governmental organizations. Educated women, particularly those working in the fields of education and welfare, have been repeatedly threatened by Mujahideen groups. Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
- Several refugee families told Amnesty International of a woman in labour who had been taken to a hospital in Kabul by her husband one evening at about 10pm in early 1994. There was a curfew in force at the time and cars were not allowed in the streets of Kabul. Armed guards reportedly stopped the car at a checkpoint, telling the husband that they would take the woman to the hospital themselves and that he should go back home. The next day, the husband was told at the hospital that the woman had not been taken there. The husband went to the guards to ask where his wife was. They reportedly showed him the dead bodies of the woman and the newly-born baby, telling him that since they had only seen videos of women delivering babies, they wanted to see how a baby was delivered in real life. Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
Beating up of women for ‘disciplinary’ reasons on the slightest pretext (wearing brightly colored shoes or thin stockings, having their bare ankles show when they walk, having their voices raised when they speak, having the sound of their laughter reach the ears of men strangers, having their heels click when walking etc.) was a routine phenomenon in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Through such public beatings (which more often than not have resulted in death or disablement of the victim) the Taliban had cowed the civilian population into submission Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
In Taliban-controlled areas - about 90% of the country - women were not allowed to work; they may not leave their homes unless covered from head to toe in the burqa or chadary and accompanied by a close male relative; girls' schools have been closed. The economic consequences of the ban on women working is especially evident in the capital where female beggars can be seen everywhere. Many of them are widows, left with children to support after years of war. Some female doctors are able to practice. This is particularly important because the Taliban will not allow male doctors to treat female patients. Rape of women by armed guards belonging to the various warring factions appears to be condoned by leaders as a method of intimidating vanquished populations and of rewarding soldiers. In March 1994 a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped in her house in Kabul's Chel Sotoon district after armed guards entered the house and killed her father for allowing her to go to school Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
While in power the Taliban claimed that the education of girls in rural Afghanistan was increasing, a UNESCO report said that there was "a whopping 65% drop in their enrollment. In schools run by the Directorate of Education, only 1 per cent of the pupils are girls. The percentage of female teachers, too, has slid from 59.2 percent in 1990 to 13.5 percent in 1999."[citation needed]
Supporters of the Taliban suggested that the depression and the other problems plaguing Afghan women were the result of dire poverty, years of war, the bad economy, and the fact that many were left war widows, and could no longer provide food for their families without some sort of international aid.[citation needed]
The Taliban justified the requirement for women to wear the burqa by appeal to Islamic teachings which state that women must cover up her body in front of non-mahram men, and that both men and women should dress modestly. Many people saw the repression under the Taliban as a form of misogyny and gender apartheid.[7]
Several Afghan refugees recalled the plight of a young woman who lived in Shahrara district of Kabul in early 1994.
"Her husband had been killed in a bomb attack. She had three children of between two and nine years old. One day she leaves her children to go and find some food. Two Mujahideen armed guards arrest her in the street and take her to their base in a house where 22 men rape her for three days. She is then allowed to go. When she reaches her home she finds her three children have died of hypothermia. She has now lost her sanity and lives in Peshawar." Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95
This report shows that women are the main victims of the continuing human rights crisis in Afghanistan. They are being killed and maimed in what appears to be deliberate artillery attacks on civilians. They are being targeted for assassination, abduction and rape. These abuses are being committed with total impunity by government forces and armed political groups who are prepared to terrorize the civilian population in order to secure and reinforce their power bases. Leaders of armed political groups have been able, when they wished, to release detained civilians and prevent arbitrary killings and other abuses. Yet most of the time they have chosen not to.
While frequently claiming that they wish to "restore" religious, ethnic and humane standards, those engaged in the fighting have persistently indulged in widespread human rights abuses and looting of property. Even non-violent groups such as women's organizations have been systematically targeted for attacks -- sometimes justified [can we find a better phrase instead 'justified'? Can we say: 'portrayed as being' on religious grounds but in reality motivated by the warring factions' attempt to control and intimidate civilians Amnesty International AI Index: ASA 11/03/95