ISLAMABAD (AP) — The lives of Afghan women and girls are being destroyed by a “suffocating” crackdown by the Taliban since they seized power nearly a year ago, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.
After capturing the capital, Kabul, in August 2021 and toppling the internationally-backed government, the Taliban presented themselves as moderates from their first time in power in the 1990s. Initially, Taliban officials talked about allowing women to continue working and girls to continue their education.
Instead, they formed an all-male government filled with hardline veterans that has banned girls from attending school from seventh grade, imposed an eye-revealing dress, and restricted women’s access to work.
Amnesty said the Taliban have also decimated protections for people facing domestic violence, detained women and girls for minor rapes and contributed to an increase in child marriage. The report also documented the torture and abuse of women detained by the Taliban for protesting the restrictions.
“Together, these policies form a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives,” the report says. “This offensive repression against the female population of Afghanistan is increasing day by day.”
The group’s researchers visited Afghanistan in March as part of nine-month research conducted between September 2021 and June 2022. They interviewed 90 women and 11 girls, aged 14 to 74, in all of afghanistan
Among them were women arrested for protesting who described torture at the hands of Taliban guards, including beatings and death threats.
One woman told Amnesty that the guards beat her and other women in the breasts and between the legs, “so that we could not show the world”. He said one told him, “I can kill you right now and nobody would say anything.”
A university student who was detained said she received electric shocks on her shoulder, face, neck and other places while the Taliban insulted her. One pointed a gun at him and said: “I will kill you and no one will be able to find your body.”
The report says rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are rising under Taliban rule.
The increase, Amnesty said, is driven by Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis and the lack of education and job prospects for women and girls. The report documented cases of forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban members, under pressure from either the Taliban member or the women’s families.
A woman in a central province of Afghanistan told Amnesty that she was forced to marry her 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old neighbor in exchange for 60,000 Afghanis (about US$670). She said she was relieved that her daughter “won’t be hungry anymore.”
She said she was also considering the same for her 10-year-old daughter, but was holding off in hopes that the girl could get an education and eventually get a job to support the family. “Of course, if they don’t open the school, I’ll have to marry her off,” he added.
“You have a patriarchal government, war, poverty, drought, girls without school. With all of these factors combined … we knew child marriage was going to go through the roof,” Stephanie Sinclair, director of Too Young to Wed, was quoted as saying in the report.
The Taliban seized Kabul as US and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year war against the Taliban insurgency. The world has refused to recognize Taliban rule, demanding that it respect human rights and show tolerance towards other groups. The US and its allies have cut billions in development funds that kept the government afloat, as well as freezing billions in Afghan national assets.
This sent the already shattered economy into freefall, dramatically increasing poverty and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their families, are being kept alive by a massive relief effort led by the UN.
Amnesty called on the international community to take action to protect Afghan women and girls.
“Less than a year after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, their draconian policies are depriving millions of women and girls of their right to lead safe, free and full lives,” said Agnès Callamard , Secretary General of Amnesty.
“If the international community does not act, it will be abandoning women and girls in Afghanistan and undermining human rights everywhere,” he said.