In the two decades before the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghan women fought relentlessly for visibility, equality, and voice. Schools reopened to girls, women filled universities, walked in parks, anchored news bulletins, and sat in parliament. There was hope, even though a little fragile, but deeply cherished, hope that Afghanistan could become a country where gender did not dictate opportunity. Fast forward to today, and those dreams are not just deferred; they are being systematically dismantled. Through a barrage of oppressive laws and religious edicts, the Taliban have effectively erased Afghan women from public life, shutting windows both, literally and figuratively, on their futures.

The first blow fell on girls’ education. Just a month after reclaiming Kabul, the Taliban banned girls from attending secondary school. Since then, the number of affected girls has surpassed 1.4 million. According to Human Rights Watch, this exclusion not only steals educational rights but also inflicts deep psychological trauma, killing aspirations before they ever bloom. Dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, journalists, and teachers are now whispered regrets behind closed doors. In a country still reeling from war and poverty, educated women were not just individuals with potential, they were pillars of the nation’s fragile reconstruction.

The cost of this policy extends far beyond personal loss. Experts warn that the absence of educated women will create a gaping void in essential professions, from healthcare to education. Afghanistan will soon face a severe shortage of nurses, midwives, and teachers, services already stretched thin in rural provinces. The ripple effects will paralyze progress, stunting not just individual lives but the collective development of the nation.

Girls’ education also serves as a protective shield. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported alarming rises in child marriage (25%) and early childbearing (45%) since the education ban. School was never just about academics; it was a sanctuary, a space where girls were safer, healthier, and more hopeful. With that gone, the years of fight seems like futile struggle and the movement seriously injured.

The Taliban’s restrictions have only grown more draconian. In August 2024, their supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, signed a new “morality law” that further stripped women of their autonomy. Women are now required to cover their bodies entirely—including their faces—with thick fabric. Public speaking is forbidden, even within earshot of their homes. They can no longer look directly at men who aren’t immediate family, nor can they travel alone. Incredibly, windows overlooking areas frequented by women, such as courtyards and kitchens, must now be sealed or screened to prevent what the regime ominously calls “obscene acts.” What might seem like extreme measures to protect women and their privacy are just rules imposed on women to bind them further in the unseen shackles. Men are free to roam and dictate to women who are rarely allowed to leave their houses.

These laws have plunged everyday life into paranoia. Taxi drivers face punishment for transporting unaccompanied women. Men must cover their bodies from the navel to the knee. Violators face undefined punishments meted out by morality enforcers, echoing a time when fear patrolled the streets more than law.

The Taliban defends these restrictions as religious obligations, but for many Afghans, they are nothing short of suffocating. Women now live under an unrelenting surveillance state, watched not only for how they behave, but for how their presence is perceived.

These policies are not just social or ideological but also economic disasters in the making. Afghanistan’s economy has contracted by over 25% since the Taliban takeover. With women banned from most forms of employment, half of the country’s potential workforce has been sidelined. According to United Nations estimates, this exclusion is costing the country up to 5% of GDP annually. And if the education bans persist, the economy could shrink by two-thirds by 2066.

Afghan women were never passive recipients of aid, they were entrepreneurs, aid workers, teachers, and nurses. Their labor sustained households and communities. Stripping them of the right to work not only impoverishes families but also cripples the country’s ability to recover from conflict. Humanitarian aid cannot be a substitute for participation. As international agencies withdraw or scale back efforts due to the Taliban’s policies, the country sinks deeper into poverty and isolation.

The world is watching, but watching alone is no longer enough. At a United Nations Security Council meeting in September 2024, the international community condemned the Taliban’s policies as systemic gender apartheid. UN Women Executive Director Sima Sami Bahous noted that 64% of Afghan women now feel unsafe stepping outside their homes alone, fearing harassment and punishment.

Even within the Taliban, these policies have stirred debate. According to the International Crisis Group, some factions in Kabul had once considered easing restrictions on girls’ education. But hardliners in Kandahar, led by Akhundzada, prevailed, insisting that such reforms would betray the ideological foundation of the regime. Thus, women’s rights became the fault line of internal Taliban politics, with the more extreme views winning ground.

Countries like Russia and China have pushed for a more cautious international approach, emphasizing engagement over sanctions. Meanwhile, grassroots resistance has blossomed within the shadows. From underground schools to satellite TV channels like Begum TV, broadcast from Paris and offering full school curricula in local languages, Afghans are quietly defying the Taliban’s constraints.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of this crisis is its human face. Mina, a young Afghan woman who addressed the United Nations, spoke of the terror and grief of fleeing her homeland. Her story, though exceptional, is not unique. Thousands of Afghan women now live in exile or internal confinement, their lives narrowed to the walls of their homes. Dreams of medical school have been replaced with endless chores. The joy of public spaces, as basic as parks, universities, and cafes, has become a distant memory.

Such policing leaves a deeper, more unbreakable kind of impact on the people’s minds. The coming generation would accept it as the norm and reinforce the same behavior ahead. Women are inferior than men is not a universal concept but one that is taught by seeing and reproducing the actions of those before us.

But Afghan women have not stopped fighting. They protest silently, teach secretly, write anonymously, and speak when they can, just like Mina did, reminding the world that they still exist and still matter.

The situation in Afghanistan today is not merely an exploitation of rights; it is a deliberate campaign of erasure. Education, speech, visibility, mobility, and labor—every dimension of a woman’s public life is under siege. While international actors debate sanctions and diplomacy, a generation of Afghan girls is growing up without access to school, speech, or hope.

The world must do more than condemn. Diplomatic engagement should be tied firmly to human rights benchmarks. Aid must be directed through channels that empower, not enable, repression. And most importantly, the voices of Afghan women who remain at home, silenced, must be amplified abroad.

Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian and moral emergency. To ignore it is to be complicit in a slow, devastating erasure of half a nation. But to act with clarity, courage, and compassion is to help reclaim the future that Afghan women deserve, and that the Taliban cannot be allowed to deny.

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