Taliban officials attempted to assuage international concerns about their takeover of Afghanistan by claiming they will preserve women’s rights during their rule — despite a long history of abusing women and recent actions that suggest a rollback of rights under the new regime.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said during an appearance Tuesday, his first since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban over the weekend, that women would retain rights within Islamic law in an apparent effort to foster a sense of legitimacy on the world stage.
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National security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged on Tuesday the Taliban have committed atrocities against women but defended the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops that preceded the Taliban takeover.
“This wasn’t a choice just between saving those women and girls and not saving those women and girls,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.
He said the Biden administration would continue to monitor the human rights situation in Afghanistan once the American military forces have left.
Decades of Taliban activity belie the idea women will escape abuses now that the Afghan government has collapsed — and even recent incidents suggest women will lose freedoms they enjoyed during the 20 years of U.S. military presence in the country.
Within hours of overtaking the capital city of Kabul, advertisements outside a bridal store portraying women with uncovered hair were painted over, being widely interpreted as a sign of the erasure women will soon face.
Stores in Kabul that sell burqas have reported an explosion in business, according to CNN, as women prepare for a possible requirement they cover themselves. Women were forced to wear burqas in public when the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan.
The network’s correspondent in Kabul also reported women have vanished from the streets since the city fell to the Taliban over the weekend.
In some of the rural provinces seized by the Taliban in the weeks before fighters overran Kabul, Afghans have reported women and girls are already being forced into marriages with Taliban commanders.
Even as the United States spent years propping up the Afghan government and keeping the Taliban at bay, the militia launched attacks on girls’ schools, which they targeted due to their opposition to the idea women should be educated or participate in society outside the home.
The Afghan government blamed the Taliban for bombing an all-girls school in May that left dozens of young students dead, although the Taliban denied responsibility.
Over the past several years, girls attempting to attend school in Afghanistan have endured acid attacks, bombings, and kidnappings at the hands of the Taliban, according to Human Rights Watch.
In Kandahar, a city in southern Afghanistan, Taliban militants squirted acid from water bottles into the faces of girls and teachers walking to school in 2008, putting some in the hospital.
Under the Taliban rule that endured until 2001, when the U.S. overthrew it following 9/11, the Taliban enforced a strict moral code through public execution, stoning, amputating limbs, and lashing.
The White House warned the Taliban against encroaching on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which staff has already abandoned amid the deteriorating security situation, and against interfering with the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies if their leaders hope to participate in international relations. Critics have blasted the White House for suggesting the Taliban could be motivated by a desire to carve out a place in the international community.
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However, the Taliban’s claims about women and a goal of peace on Tuesday were widely viewed as an effort to establish legitimacy as the rulers of Afghanistan.
Lawmakers were still deeply concerned Tuesday about the future of Afghan women under Taliban rule.
Forty-six senators from both parties sent a letter Tuesday evening to the Biden administration, urging officials to “create a humanitarian parole category specifically for women leaders, activists, human rights defenders, judges, parliamentarians, journalists, and members of the Female Tactical Platoon of the Afghan Special Security Forces” that would speed up the process for Afghan women to receive placement in the U.S.
