Don’t forget Afghanistan

It’s been almost a month since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, and the country’s fate is no longer dominating the global news agenda.

So, what’s really going on as the world averts its gaze? For the 38 million Afghans left in country, the terrible realities of a new life under Taliban rule are becoming ever more apparent. 

On Saturday, the Taliban raised its flag over the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul, marking the formal beginning of its administration.

On Sunday, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the appointed Higher Education Minister, announced a number of much-anticipated rules for female education. 

According to Haqqani, women will still be allowed to study, but they must wear the hijab and Afghan universities and schools must be segregated by gender. Subjects taught in universities will also be reviewed to “create a reasonable and Islamic curriculum”. 

While gender-segregated schools were already common before the Taliban takeover, female students weren’t obliged to follow a dress code and men and women studied side by side at university.

The new rules are less strict than during the previous Taliban rule of 1996-2001, when women and older girls were banned from education altogether. But some fear that they will have the same effect: a scarcity of female teachers and lack of resources to fund segregated classes means women could end up excluded anyway. Haqqani has dismissed these concerns, arguing that, if needs be, “we can also use male teachers to teach from behind a curtain, or use technology.”

In another ominous move for many women in the region, the all-male cabinet has replaced the Women’s Affairs Ministry with the Ministry of Vice and Virtue. This latter department was notorious during the Taliban’s previous stint in power for placing religious police on the streets to enforce Sharia law and beating women for offences such as leaving home without a male guardian or dressing immodestly. 

In the past few weeks, the Taliban has also broken its promise of offering amnesty to all those linked to the former Afghan regime. Reports of door-to-door searches for targets are growing and Taliban death squads have hunted down and murdered at least four Afghan counterterrorism agents who had worked at the headquarters of the Afghan intelligence service. Gruesome details to emerge include a squad pulling out a victim’s fingernails before shooting him. 

Ravina Shamdasani, from the UN Human Rights Office, says she has also received reports of Taliban members hunting down individuals who have participated in women’s rights protests in recent weeks. And last week, at least four were killed after the Taliban used live ammunition to break up a demonstration. 

Admittedly, fear is not the whole picture: some Afghans – even those who didn’t support the Taliban – feel a sense of relief. A number of Afghans from the Zhari district in the Kandahar Province have spent the last few weeks rebuilding shops destroyed by endless fighting between the former government and Taliban forces. They told Charlie Faulkner, a British reporter on ground, that they now hope to live in relative peace. Many residents are also glad to see the back of “corrupt” local police forces. 

But even those less fearful of Taliban brutality are feeling the effects of the country’s economic meltdown. Many are struggling to withdraw money from banks and millions of Afghans are at risk of starvation as food prices soar. 

Afghanistan is a country heavily dependent on foreign aid. Yet billions of dollars in Afghan cash reserves and foreign funding have been frozen since the Taliban captured Kabul. 

The Taliban is asking foreign governments for money and the UN is attempting to drum up $600m of emergency funds for Afghanistan, to address the urgent need for “food, medicine, health services, safe water and sanitation”. 

If reports of human rights abuses continue to mount, international bodies will be forced to navigate an increasingly difficult tension: how can they address the acute humanitarian needs of millions of Afghans without helping to prop up a repressive regime? For the sake of ordinary Afghans, it’s a question that must be answered soon.