The future of women and girls in Afghanistan

FILE PHOTO: Afghan women wait to receive free wheat donated by the Afghan government during a ...
20 August 2021

What is the future for the women in Afghanistan after the Taliban take over? Despite reassurances from the Taliban, for Afghan women it seems to be the beginning of a new nightmare. When they led Afghanistan in the second half of the 1990s, the Taliban plunged the country into total darkness: women were “erased” from society. With the return of the Taliban, there is a real risk that the most extremist version of Sharia law will return. The women targeted are mainly those who have studied, who work and who are part of civil society. Many women journalists have told of threatening phone calls and visits from the Taliban to their homes at night. All Afghan women are afraid.