Taliban 2.0: Two Years After Takeover, Afghan Women See Gains Whittled Away

A Taliban fighter and an Afghan woman eye one another in Kabul in December 2022.

Since their return to power in August 2021, the hard-line Islamists have waged a brutal crackdown on dissent and reintroduced their extreme and tribal interpretation of Islamic Shari’a law.

Two Afghan children stand amid piles of garbage next to their home in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is hard to measure, but it is estimated to have dropped by nearly 20 percent since the Taliban returned to power, endangering the lives of millions in an already impoverished country.

 

On March 23, 2022, more than 1 million Afghan girls were turned away from schools following a last-minute reversal of the Taliban's decision to reopen them. Under the Taliban's theocratic government, only girls below the sixth grade are permitted to attend school.

In May 2022, the Taliban decreed that women in public must wear all-encompassing robes and cover their faces except for their eyes. It also told them to stay at home unless they have important work outside the house.

Afghan men at Tolo TV wear face masks to show solidarity with their female colleagues, who were ordered to wear veils at the studio in Kabul.

In November, Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada ordered the return to qisas and hudood punishments, which essentially allow "eye-for-an-eye" retribution and corporal punishments. Hundreds across the country have been publicly flogged, stoned, or had body parts amputated. 

The Taliban have also banned women from participating in sports, forcing many to go underground, such as these members of a women's soccer team photographed in Kabul in September 2022.

Hooded shop mannequins have become a symbol of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, as seen in this December 2022 photo. The Taliban initially said mannequins must be either removed or beheaded, but after shopkeepers complained, they agreed on this bizarre compromise.

A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul in May. Aid groups estimate that some 30 million Afghans are in need of assistance.

Burqa-clad women hold placards demanding their right to education in Mazar-i-Sharif in June.

Women have been banned from attending university, and their job opportunities have been largely restricted to the health and education sectors.

A bride attends a mass wedding for families who can't afford weddings in Kabul in July.

The Taliban's religious police have ordered wedding hall owners to refrain from playing music and engaging in activities that contradict Islamic rulings. The Taliban considers music to be against the teachings of Islam.

A woman enters a beauty salon in Kabul where the ads featuring women have been defaced. Women's faces have been artlessly deleted from advertisements and murals around the country.

 

An Afghan beautician removes a poster in a beauty salon in Kabul on July 24 after it was forced to close by Taliban decree. The closure has sparked rare public opposition from many Afghan women as it leaves another hole in their economic and social lives.
 

A young child suffering from thalassemia in Kandahar in July.

According to the United Nations, the agency has received less than 5 percent of the funds required to help Afghanistan, making it the lowest-funded aid operation globally despite facing the world’s largest and most severe humanitarian crisis.

With the only musical activity permitted being the singing of certain types of religious songs and Taliban chants, musical instruments are routinely confiscated for burning, such as this equipment in Herat Province this month.

A woman wearing a burqa walks in the early morning on the outskirts of Kandahar City in June.

From 2019 to 2020, the poverty rate was nearly 47 percent. Recent data shows that by mid-2022, two-thirds of Afghan households reportedly could not afford food and other basic non-food items, forcing many adults to engage in low-productivity activities to generate income.