Invisible, and now silent. Three years after the Taliban's return to power, Afghan women continue to see their few remaining rights dwindle away.

A Taliban ministry promulgated a new set of laws on August 21 that it said “will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice”. The laws aim to control all aspects of the social and private life of Afghans, especially of Afghan women.

Among the rules in the 114-page text published by the ministry is the requirement for women to cover their bodies and faces completely if they leave the house as well as a ban on women making their voices heard in public.

The new laws are “attacking their very existence”, Chekeba Hachemi, president of the organisation Free Afghanistan, told FRANCE 24.

 “We no longer have the right to hear the sound of a woman's voice, or to see even a glimpse of a woman's body. It's as if we were telling them: ‘We want to kill you slowly’.”

 “The only right we are allowed is to breathe. And even then ...” Hamida Aman, the founder of Begum TV, a Paris-based channel aimed at educating Afghan women and girls, told France Culture.

The UN, the European Union, human rights groups and Afghan organisations have expressed their deep concerns over the new set of laws, which include some provisions that have already been in effect informally since the Taliban seized power again in August 2021.

But there is only so much the international community can do to help Afghan women.

Short-lived optimism

“After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, in an August 25 statement in which she said the laws evoke “a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future”.

The UN has called for the immediate repeal of the text.

The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced a “new attack on the rights of women and girls”. The EU said it was “distressed” by the decree, which was “a new blow” to the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

The EU also said the new laws create “another obstacle to the normalisation of relations” with Afghanistan, signalling that European recognition of the Taliban regime can only be achieved if Kabul “fully respects [its] international obligations and [those] towards the people of Afghanistan”.

The Taliban, in return, have denounced the “arrogance” of the West in its condemnations of the restrictions on women – which UN officials including Secretary General Antonio Guterres have described as “gender-based apartheid”.

On the same day the Taliban ministry published the new laws, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said in a statement that the regime had banned him from entering the country.

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International condemnations no longer seem to have any effect.

“In the first year after the regime change in Afghanistan, the situation was not as bad as people might have feared,” said Mélissa Cornet, a specialist on gender issues in Afghanistan, pointing out that journalists were still working and women were still attending university.

 “The Taliban really wanted to be recognised by the international community. They made lots of reassurances and there was a real hope they had changed,” said Cornet, who lived in Kabul while overseeing research on women's role in Afghan society for local and international organisations beginning in 2018.

This optimism, however, was short-lived. “As soon as the Taliban realised they would not be formally recognised by regaining a seat at the UN and the frozen assets of the central bank, there was a U-turn,” Cornet explained. “They said to themselves, ‘If we play the game and get nothing in return, we'll do what we want at home’.”

'Nobody wants another conflict'

The Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996 and were overthrown in 2001 by a NATO intervention following the September 11 attacks. But despite 20 years of war and occupation by US-led NATO troops, the Taliban slowly regained control of the entire country and outlasted the United States, despite the latter's military superiority.   

“There's a very proud side to saying, ‘We were in power in the 1990s, the United States came but we beat them in the end, so now you Western states have no right to come and lecture us and tell us what to do’,’’ Cornet said.

Ironically, since the international community made women's rights its focus, it has now become very difficult for the Taliban to compromise on this issue, she said. “If they ever announced that schools were reopening [for women], it would be seen by Taliban ultraconservatives as a kind of defeat, a concession, to the internationals.”

From one law to the next, human rights in Afghanistan – and women's rights in particular – are being eroded without the international community being able to intervene.

 “For three years, we've seen the status of women go [from bad to worse], and we've reached a stage where it's unacceptable that the world isn't reacting,” said Chela Noori of the Afghan Women of France organisation.

The world is moving “towards acceptance of this situation, [because] nothing stands in the way of the Taliban”, said Begum TV's Aman.

 “Unfortunately, there's not much we can do, which is why it's difficult to continue proposing solutions,” Cornet said.

Without a resistance movement in Afghanistan, the situation cannot change, Cornet said. “After all the decades of war, nobody wants another conflict, another war, or an invasion.”

And the Taliban regime is capitalising on the situation, said Cornet, pointing to the fact that the country is at peace for the first time in 20 years, poppy production has declined by 95 percent (almost all the heroin consumed in Europe comes from Afghanistan), there are no prominent terrorist groups operating in the country and the borders are under control, preventing any wave of migration to Europe.

 “Security issues are more important to Western countries than women's rights in this distant country,” Cornet observed, calling out the “cynicism” of such an assessment.

'The UN has to work with the Taliban'

Heather Barr, deputy director of the Women's Rights Division at HRW, deplores the fact that the crisis in Afghanistan has been relegated to a secondary concern by the Ukraine war. “The lack of an effective international response gives the impression that women's rights are not really a concern for world leaders,” she said in February.

 “No one cares about Afghan women or human rights in this country,” Aman told France Culture, recalling the conditions under which the Doha III conference, the third UN meeting on Afghanistan in the Qatari capital, took place in late June.

The Taliban, which had not taken part in the two previous conferences, made their participation in the third conditional on the exclusion of civil society organisations, and particularly women, from the talks.

The UN once again called for the “inclusion of women” in public life during the discussions, a request that did not prevent the Taliban from continuing to harden its policies towards women.

“The United Nations is silent in the face of the Taliban,” Aman lamented.

Cornet noted the UN needs to maintain contacts with the regime to continue providing aid to the country.  

 “The UN works in Afghanistan and therefore has to work with the Taliban,” she said. “If it takes a very hard line on women's rights, it will be expelled from the country and no one will be able to talk to the regime and help Afghans.”

Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the latest World Bank report, “poverty affects half of the population, with persistent high unemployment and underemployment”.

The United Nations Development Programme said in an April 2023 report that over 90 percent of the population was unable to meet its basic food requirements.

The International Crisis Group, an NGO focused on monitoring and preventing deadly conflicts, explained in a January report how Afghanistan's neighbours have been seeking to re-establish relations with Kabul in areas such as security and trade.

Regional nations “are convinced that the best way to secure their countries’ interests and moderate the Taliban’s behaviour in the long term is patient deliberation with Kabul, rather than ostracism”, says the report.

 “If you don't talk to them, you can't influence them,” Cornet said simply. “The Taliban couldn't care less about being sanctioned by the international community. The fact that they can't travel or can't use their bank accounts doesn't bother them.”

For their part, Afghan women are doing what they can to be seen and raise awareness of their plight. After laws called on them to hide their faces and lower their voices, several women filmed themselves singing, protesting online under the hashtag #LetUsExist.

 “You are afraid of this voice, and this voice will be stronger every day,” wrote Taiba Sulaimani, a young Afghan woman, on X in a message accompanying a video of a group of activists singing in chorus.