Stoning for adultery, execution for tight clothes: Return of dark days for Afghan women under Taliban
Afghanistan’s women are once again afraid to walk around freely or pick up a book, as the authoritarian and extremist Taliban’s horrors have returned to haunt them in their safe-havens.
Terrorists and rebels have not been eradicated off the face of the Earth in the two decades since the United States interfered, but the dreaded bunch of extremists has recently been given carte blanche to run rampant on the streets as the US fades into the setting sun of Afghanistan.
Many claims that the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s presence in the Central Asian country since 2001 has been nothing but invasive, but on the other hand, it provided ‘freedom’ that an entire generation of Afghans has enjoyed in the last two decades.
Those tiny specks of ‘independence’ were blown away by the dreadful gusts of darkness from the life of women who are now nothing more than a commodity in the eyes of Taliban zealots.
According to a new rule issued by 21st-century looting zealots, Afghans must furnish a list of females above the age of 15 and widows under the age of 45 for sex slavery and marriage with their “fighters.“
“All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,” the letter, issued in the name of the Taliban Cultural Commission, reportedly read.
Taliban’s Sharia law
Several regulations and policies that marked the terror group’s administration from 1996 to 2001, when it implemented the Talibani version of Islamic Sharia law, have been re-imposed on Afghan women.
During the period it dominated Afghanistan, the fanatical organisation compelled women to disguise themselves from head to toe, forbade them from working outside their households, knocked down girls’ education, and made it a law for women to be accompanied by a male relative every time they left home.
“I’m worried that women could return to the dark days of the past when we were just housewives and banned from taking part in society, culture, politics, and even sport. What happens when the Taliban takes over the cities? What will happen to women then?”
Sanam Sadat, an activist in Faryab’s provincial capital of Maimana, according to news agency ANI
“As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started. I felt like I can no longer laugh out loud, I can no longer listen to my favourite songs, I can no longer meet my friends in our favourite cafe, I can no longer wear my favourite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to my job or finish the university degree that I worked for years to achieve,” an Afghan woman told the Guardian
“All of us older women have been talking about how hard it was as a woman in the old days,” 60-year-old Fawzia said. “I used to live in Kabul then and I remember how they beat the women and girls who left their homes without their burqas.”
“We have no burqa in our home, and I have no intention of getting one. I don’t want to hide behind a curtain-like cloth. If I wear the burqa, it means that I have accepted the Taliban’s government. I have given them the right to control me. Wearing a chador is the beginning of my sentence as a prisoner in my house. I’m afraid of losing the accomplishments I fought for so hard,” said Habiba, mother of a 26-year-old daughter.
“We are very worried about the forced marriages by the Taliban. If they come for us like this, then we will end our lives. It will be the only option for us.”
Tahira, divorced Afghan women scared for her life after the takeover by Taliban
Featured image: Reuters
Written by Prakriti S
