A year ago, the Taliban seized power after taking Kabul. Since the establishment of his government, the prohibitions against women have multiplied, taking away more and more rights: they have been excluded from public positions, schools and colleges, prohibited from traveling without accompanying a man… etc. Recently, it has been made compulsory for them to wear the full veil in public.

“The main targets of the Taliban were women,” Myriam Benraad, professor of international relations at Schiller International University and author of BFMTV.com, told BFMTV.com. Terrorism, the pains of revenge (2021). “They want to reduce them to domesticity.”

“We are witnessing the progressive exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere and their institutionalized and systematic oppression,” Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights, also declared in early July.

“A very degraded situation” for women before the return of the Taliban

Before the return of the Taliban to power, “we still had a very degraded situation” for Afghan women, explains Myriam Benraad. The Taliban regime had been overthrown in 2001 by US intervention, but “they had been reestablishing themselves for 10 years in the rural regions where they had once again imposed their ideology.” She points out that these rural areas are more conservative, more likely to listen to Taliban rhetoric, than urban areas.

“In remote rural places, the situation has changed little or nothing” for women, Fahimeh Robiolle, a professor at Essec and vice president of the France-Afghanistan Club, also told BFMTV.com. . “It’s from there that the Taliban has branched out again bit by bit since 2012, 2013.”

In general in the country, “we saw more and more domestic violence and the questioning of a certain number of laws” for women, says the professor. Myriam Benraad also speaks of a “gradual deterioration” in the last five years, there has been a “challenge of women’s rights in the face of the indifference of the Afghan authorities”.

The situation of women, however, continued to be much better in the city with an “increase in the number of women students in schools, in the university, many women journalists, lawyers, judges…”, emphasizes Fahimeh Robiolle. He remembers, for example, that the Afghan army had opened its doors to women. “In Kabul, women had managed to impose themselves on the cultural, social and political scene,” Myriam Benraad abounds.

When they arrive, “it’s a cold shower”

Even before the return of the Taliban, the local population was concerned about the Doha agreement, signed in February 2020 between the United States and the Taliban, which formalized the withdrawal of US troops from Afghan soil. “The concern has existed since the signing of the peace agreement in Doha,” explains Fahimeh Robiolle, recalling the tensions and attacks that preceded August 2021, sometimes clearly against women. “For several months there was an atmosphere of terror in Kabul.”

And shortly after the official arrival of the Taliban to power, the first prohibitions for women fell: women were excluded from public service positions, from school and the ministry of women was replaced by that of “prevention of vice”.

“Since the Taliban took power, women and girls have experienced the biggest and fastest setback to their rights in decades,” said Michelle Bachelet. “There have been 26 fatwas or orders given by the Taliban, and women’s freedoms have been sullied by each one of these orders,” says Fahimeh Robiolle.

In the city “we saw the closure of beauty salons, posters torn down when women were in them until the return of the mandatory veil”, laments Myriam Benraad. “Everything that Afghan women had managed to achieve in the last 20 years was knocked down, it was the cold shower.”

France had condemned last May the announcement of the mandatory use of the full veil in public spaces, writing that “this extremely worrying new restriction is added to several other prohibitions promulgated by the Taliban since their seizure of power by force on August 15, in particular the ban on secondary education for Afghan girls and the ban on a woman traveling alone.”

Forced marriages, torture and threats

The scarcity of humanitarian aid and the extremely precarious situations in which families find themselves have also caused an increase in behaviors that particularly harm women, especially in certain poor regions: sexual slavery, prostitution or even the sale of children, for families in great distress.

In a report on violence against women by the Taliban, the NGO Amnesty International also writes that “the number of child marriages, early marriages and forced marriages in Afghanistan is increasing under the Taliban regime”, in particular due to “the economic and humanitarian crisis” but also “the lack of educational and professional opportunities for women and girls”, not to mention the pressure exerted by the Taliban.

Since the early days of the Taliban, Afghan men and women have voiced their disagreement with the new power by demonstrating. In May, some took to the streets at the announcement of the obligation to wear the full veil in public for women. And no later than Saturday, the Taliban violently dispersed in Kabul a demonstration of forty women for the right to work and education.

But those who are arrested pay dearly for their protests.

“The Taliban harassed and mistreated women protesters and subjected them to arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances and acts of physical and psychological torture,” Amnesty International writes, recounting the beatings suffered by some, “electric shocks,” threats of death and insults

“There are women demonstrating in the streets who have been arrested, who have been abused, raped in Taliban prisons,” said Fahimeh Robiolle. Some were “released to save the image of the Taliban, who told them ‘in any case, we will kill you once the international community forgets you'”.

“Everything they said was pure lies”

This violence, this repression of women’s rights, if in fact not surprising, nevertheless goes against what the Taliban have promised the international community. After closing the girls’ schools, they repeatedly assured that they would reopen. Last March, middle and high school girls were able to return to class for a few hours before the Taliban finally decided to deny them access.

“They said they couldn’t afford it,” while “religious schools for boys are springing up everywhere,” says Fahimeh Robiolle. “When the Taliban were in front of the political and diplomatic delegations of Western countries, they said what we wanted to hear”, but “everything they said was pure lies to try to gain recognition” from the international community, explains the professor. .

“It’s a showcase,” says Myriam Benraad, who recalls that the Taliban “need financial help, alliances.”

Remember that today many women activists are hiding in Afghanistan, they have hidden because the regime threatens them with death. “We have women who cannot even reach a border,” Fahimeh Robiolle also stresses, because they would be arrested. Many do not have the means to cross the country anyway, and sometimes do not have a passport.

“We are in the process of stopping this population from living”

It is difficult to see how the situation of these women could improve in the coming months. “Things will continue to deteriorate for all Afghans, starting with women,” according to Myriam Benraad. “Today there is no more freedom for women”, abounds Fahimeh Robiolle.

“The woman does not have a job, she does not have school, next year there will be no women in the university because there was no baccalaureate. We are in the process of ceasing to live this population: they will be forced to marry very quickly, they will disappear from society. life, and the little ones will be indoctrinated,” she laments.

To reverse the situation, “a revolt movement would be needed, single women will have many problems to regain their status, we need a global revolt”, explains Myriam Benraad. But the Afghan population is unarmed and does not have the means to fight today against an armed Taliban movement that does not hesitate to shoot, to repress.

For Fahimeh Robiolle, at least we must “help those who are in danger of death so that they can leave the country.”

The NGOs call for intervention from the international community “such as targeted sanctions or travel bans” targeting the Taliban, writes Amnesty International, for example. “If the international community does not act, it will abandon the women and girls of Afghanistan and undermine rights in the rest of the world,” writes the secretary general of the NGO.