What now for the women of Afghanistan?

Almost exactly two years ago, I remember aid agencies telling Geneva journalists of their growing unease at the possible consequences of the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan.

On July 1, 2021, US forces had quit Bagram airport in the middle of the night, fulfilling a promise made first by Donald Trump, and carried out by Joe Biden, to end what some called America’s “forever war”.

The aid agencies’ biggest fear? An escalation of the violence and insecurity that Afghans had endured for years. At the time the International Committee of the Red Cross said “there are no shortcuts to achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan. Ensuring protection of those affected by the conflict…is an essential precursor to peace, prosperity and self-reliance. The consequences of conflict reverberate long after the fighting ends.”

The fears were borne out throughout July and the first half of August, as fighting between government forces and the Taliban raged. But it didn’t last long. By mid-August the Taliban had seized power, the government and all the westerners (as in Sudan and so many other crises, they always seem to be first to the airport) had fled.

An uneasy calm settled over the country. Aid agencies reported being able to access parts of Afghanistan they had been unable to reach for years. Some spoke hopefully of a new, modern Taliban, one that would respect the rights of women.

Taliban 2.0?

How wrong that optimism was. Since they took over, the Taliban have systematically deprived Afghan women and girls of the right to go to university, to secondary school, and of virtually all jobs. They are banned from public parks and cafes, and not supposed to leave home without a male chaperone.

On Inside Geneva this week, we discuss what the future holds for Afghan women, and how the United Nations, which is pouring billions of dollars of humanitarian aid into Afghanistan, should respond.

Professor of international law and former UN special rapporteur Karima Bennoune believes those who hoped for a new Taliban were hopelessly naïve. “Anyone who believed in something called Taliban 2.0, had never actually spoken to an Afghan woman human rights defender,” she tells Inside Geneva. “Because the Afghan women human rights defenders, they knew what was going to happen.”

Fereshta Abbasi, who spent years in her native Afghanistan working for a better future for her country, is one of those human rights defenders. “We knew what will happen, we knew the Taliban,” she remembers. “On the 15th of August [2021] we knew that we had lost. We’d lost every single support system that we had. We were expecting to see that the Taliban would push back women to the houses, and that’s what’s happening today.”

Particularly distressing for Abbasi, who is now based in the United Kingdom and working for Human Rights Watch, is the fact that she believed the violence and insecurity of the years before August 2021 were Afghanistan’s low point. She remembers attacks on her office, and of losing a close friend in a suicide bombing.  But she also attended Herat university, and then worked in Kabul. “We had rights,” she points out.

Gender apartheid?

Now those rights have virtually disappeared. The Taliban have even told the UN that women can no longer work for aid agencies. It’s a strategy Bennoune calls “gender apartheid”, and she believes the UN, and the international community, must recognise this, as they did with South Africa, and respond appropriately.

But how? The UN has a huge aid operation in Afghanistan. Millions are in need of food, shelter, and medical care. It probably suits the Taliban very well to have the UN there, preventing a humanitarian catastrophe. But does continuing to supply aid – especially when Afghan women risk being excluded from the process – make the UN complicit in the Taliban’s repression?

Some UN aid workers have been expressing their unease, writing a letter criticising the UN’s “incoherent” approach, in which some agencies have told women to work from home, while continuing with men in the field.

Fiona Frazer, who heads the human rights team in the UN’s assistance mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), acknowledges the difficulties, but believes maintaining a UN presence is vital. “Despite the fact that it does seem, every month…or so a new decree comes out that pushes women further back into their homes, we have to keep being here” she tells Inside Geneva. “That’s what women and girls tell us: they want us to be here. They feel the need to have the UN be here.”

Frazer continues to engage with the Taliban, she explains, in order at the very least to stop things getting worse, and to bear witness. Her team can sometimes support the families of detainees, finding out where and how they are. She also regularly reminds the Taliban that without women in secondary education, there will be no women teachers for girls’ primary school, and no women health workers – both classes of female worker the Taliban admit they do actually need.

Tricky balancing act

Interestingly none of our podcast participants suggested the UN should actually stop work in Afghanistan. Instead, Abbasi and Bennoune argue, the UN needs to find a way to work that will not trade human rights for humanitarian access. “Any willingness to work while excluding women staff is completely flouting the UN charter,” says Bennoune.

It’s a tricky balancing act, and to hear more about how the UN could actually achieve that balance, do listen to Inside Geneva. For now, human rights groups are buoyed by the focus on Afghan women during the current session of the UN human rights council.

Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur for Afghanistan, delivered a hard hitting report in which he warned the Taliban’s systematic repression of women could amount to a crime against humanity, and, for the first time, used the term “gender apartheid”.

Abbasi, who was in the council room for his speech, confessed to being in tears when she heard it. That the UN has now so publicly identified and condemned what is happening in Afghanistan is, she believes, a strong sign of support for Afghan women and girls.

“If there is a resistance in Afghanistan, that’s definitely the women of Afghanistan. That 12 year old girl who’s still attending an underground school in Helmand is the resistance of Afghanistan. The Taliban will never be able to erase their minds, and erase the knowledge that they have already gained.”