Defiant women stand up to Taliban

KABUL • Afghan women marched in protest to demand the Taliban take heed of female opinions when they form a new government, in a rare public show of dissent against the fundamentalist group’s vision for Afghanistan. Three dozen women, carrying placards reading “Don’t be scared we are all together” and “No government will last without the support of women,” marched in the western city of Herat Thursday morning.

“We’ve worked hard for years to achieve and maintain our rights, abandoning them now is impossible,” one woman shouted through a megaphone.

The Taliban are to ban women from serving at ministerial level in the new administration, but may allow them to serve in more junior positions.

The group is committed to women’s rights “within the framework of Sharia law,” but has not articulated what that means in practice. Many Afghan women say the imposition of arbitrary and impossible-to-meet “religious” conditions have already effectively banned them from working or studying.

Shokreya Mashal, a women’s rights activist in hiding in Kabul, said: “The Taliban have reduced women to zero and all 20 years of effort. They destroyed our lives. It is this law that has ruined everything.”

It is often difficult to tell which restrictions came from the group’s central leadership and which were imposed by local commanders.

“The Taliban have a different view in each province,” Mashal added. “So they do not have a clear leadership to take orders. And all their promises so far have been false. Women are neither free nor able to work.”

Shabnam Dawran, a presenter for state TV channel RTA Pashto, said the militants refused her entry to work because she was a woman.

In Daykundi, a rural province southwest of Kabul, Taliban authorities who captured the area insisted girls above Grade 6 must be taught at home.