Don’t trust; verify

Don’t take Taliban’s word for it

ONE OF OUR national columnists—we think it was Bret Stephens—said we didn’t go into Afghanistan to help women and girls. But we certainly did, once we got there.

Now the question a lot of people are asking: What’s going to happen to the women and girls left behind in Afghanistan?

Can anybody—even spokesmen for the Biden administration— make the argument that things will get better, or even remain the same, for them?

Folks can and will argue about the failures of the Afghan government, the president fleeing, reports that some members of the nation’s military gave up without a fight, and how it was never going to stand without America propping it up.

But the one good thing Afghanistan’s government did (at America’s prodding) was advance the rights of women. Somebody noted that under Taliban rule, dogs could go and come at their own pleasure, but women could not. And now, cannot.

From an archive of the State Department: “The Taliban perpetrated egregious acts of violence against women, including rape, abduction, and forced marriage. Some families resorted to sending their daughters to Pakistan or Iran to protect them. Forced to quit their jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses, and clerical workers when the Taliban took over, women could work only in very limited circumstances. Under Taliban rule, women were given only the most rudimentary access to health care and medical care.”

Realize that in most hospitals under Taliban rule, male doctors could only examine a female patient if she was fully clothed. And female doctors were not allowed. Options were minimal.

(Imagine sending your daughters to Pakistan or Iran because the locals were too misogynistic!)

Older women in Afghanistan remember what Taliban rule was like in the 1990s, but the oldest are likely to remember their freedoms not just during the reign of these theocrats but before. Did you know Afghanistan gave women the right to vote around the same time as the United States?

Another piece of history from the Department of State says women had rights protected by law before the Taliban came to power: “Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women,” the note states. “In 1977, women comprised over 15 percent of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70 percent of schoolteachers, 50 percent of government workers and university students, and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to work.”

So you can imagine why human rights champions around the world are wary of what the Taliban will do to women now.

While the extremist group said women will have rights to the “extent Islamic law grants them,” it’s hard to convince the world of the gang’s liberalism when it has instructed women to stay home from work.

“Fear is mounting for women and girls in Afghanistan after the Taliban told working women to stay at home, admitting they were not safe in the hands of the militant group’s soldiers,” CNN reports. “[A Taliban spokesman] said the guidance to stay at home would be temporary, and would allow the group to find ways to ensure that women are not ‘treated in a disrespectful way’ or ‘God forbid, hurt.’ He admitted the measure was necessary because the Taliban’s soldiers ‘keep changing and are not trained.’”

Those assurances are less than assuring.

The Biden administration has been evacuating thousands, but the story of Afghan women suffering under the Taliban won’t end on Aug. 31. Nor should they be forgotten after that date has passed.