‘Taliban could undo women’s advances’
Washington, US - A return to Taliban rule in Afghanistan would risk undoing the gains made in women’s rights since the group’s ousting nearly two decades ago, US intelligence warned in a declassified report.
According to the two-page National Intelligence Council document, the insurgents' views have not changed since their time in power between 1996 and the US military’s 2001 intervention.
At that time, the Taliban imposed their fundamentalist view of religion by prohibiting women from studying or working.
The withdrawal of US and international forces, which is set to be completed by September, has raised fears the Taliban will return full force.
‘The Taliban remains broadly consistent in its restrictive approach to women’s rights and would roll back much of the past two decades’ progress if the group regained national power,’ the report said.
It notes the group has seen little change in its leadership, remains ‘inflexible’ in negotiations and ‘enforces strict social constraints in areas that it already controls’.
Some group leaders have made public commitments to respecting women’s rights, but only as a condition of the Taliban’s fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia, according to the report.
‘If the Taliban were again Afghanistan’s dominant power, we assess that any prospect for moderating the group’s policies toward women would lie with ethnic minorities’ ability to maintain local variation and technological development,’ the report said.