Bleak future for Afghan women

It would be wishful thinking to believe any tangible signs of genuine moderation emerged from the Taliban’s crucial first media conference in Kabul on Tuesday. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid may have spoken vaguely about an amnesty for adversaries who worked for the deposed government or foreign forces fighting in the country, including Australia’s. And he may have given assurances Afghanistan will not be used, as it was previously by al-Qa’ida, to launch terrorist attacks. But when it came to the crux of the previous Taliban regime’s appalling human rights abuses – especially its treatment of women and schoolgirls – the indications were not encouraging. They should leave our own political class, with its preoccupation about women’s rights, in no doubt about the need for real concern about the dark days that lie ahead for Afghanistan’s women and schoolgirls.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of the challenges they face. It is vital that the international community makes it clear the new regime will get neither the diplomatic recognition nor the aid it craves as long as women are again consigned to oppression and discrimination. Some may see a plus in the fact that soon after entering Kabul a Taliban commander allowed himself to be interviewed on television by a female anchor wearing a heavy black burka. Absurdly, that would not have happened under the previous Taliban incumbency. As well, progress may be seen in the way Mr Mujahid allowed himself to be subjected to strong questioning about women’s rights by a female Al Jazeera reporter from New Zealand, Charlotte Bellis. But to read into what he said anything but a return to desperately hard times for Afghanistan’s women and schoolgirls, and the rest of its people, would be delusional. After years under the tutelage of Qatar’s immensely wealthy ruling family, which also supports the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists attacking Israel, the Taliban spokesman’s obvious aim was to try to present a different face to the world. But the reality is that nothing much has changed. Tragically, the Taliban remains grounded where it was, especially on women and girls’ education.

Mr Mujahid claimed women would be allowed to work and study. But he added ominously that they would be allowed to do so only “within the framework of sharia … Our women are Muslim. They will be happy living within our framework of sharia,” he said. Asked whether the Taliban would “lock women and girls in their houses again” and female politicians and officials welcomed within the Taliban, he insisted the “Islamic Emirate” was “committed to the rights of women as long as they stick strictly within the framework of sharia”.

In Taliban terms, that means not only strict sharia but also an even more extreme form of repression based on the ancient tribal code of Pashtunwali imposed on communities across Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas.

The prospects for human rights under the new Taliban regime could hardly appear more disheartening. From zero in 2001, girls now make up 3.5 million of the nine million schoolchildren. That astounding progress is one of the great achievements of the Western coalition that included Australia. Thousands of women go to university. Many are in public life, including politics.

But the outlook for them now could hardly be more ominous. Whatever moderation Mr Mujahid tried to display is countered by disheartening accounts of unrelenting brutality by Taliban fighters as they advanced across the country: girls as young as 15 rounded up and carried off as sex slaves in Rustaq; female bank workers in Kandahar sent home and told to send their brothers to fill their jobs; the ruthless execution of government officials, even public beheadings.

As CNN reporter Clarissa Ward reported on Monday, “it’s the people you don’t see on the streets who are the story” – the women who have already disappeared indoors or fled, terrified of being whipped into hardline sharia submission, and men terrified of the Taliban’s murderous record.

Imran Khan, the one-time playboy cricketer who is now the Prime Minister of Pakistan, which has played a perfidious role in getting the Taliban back in power, cheered the insurgents’ victory as having “broken the shackles of slavery” in Afghanistan. Nothing could be more delusional. All the great democratic and human rights gains achieved by the Western coalition are now at serious risk. It will not be easy but the world must seek ways to ensure they are not destroyed.