By Maryam Sadr | Staff Writer
It has been more than a year since Taliban retook the control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, exactly two decades after they were “defeated” by the US military. Taliban (in Pashto Ṭālebān, meaning Students) as an Islamic fundamentalist group first emerged in the northern parts of Pakistan in the early 1990s right after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. They initially promoted bringing peace, and security, and applying their interpretation of sharia law. However, they also enacted extreme measures like banning music, TV, and cinema, closing girls’ schools, prohibiting women in public spaces, and requiring specific coverage for women and men. They oversaw brutal massacres, detention, rape, and many other atrocities. With the Taliban resurgence, many believed they had changed over 20 years, begging the question of how different the Taliban of the 1990s is from the “Taliban 2.0” of today.
Women in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban takeover
To evaluate how much the Taliban has evolved, it is crucial to look at the state of the main group disaffected by their resurgence, women. Even though the Taliban promised that women would be allowed to practice their rights to work and education under sharia law, they are still systematically excluded.
It has been more than a year since girls got banned from attending school, and recently, university. Working, going to the gym, and even visiting public spaces are all now restricted for women. Less than 3 months after the takeover, they imposed the same old dress code (burqa) on women and banned them from traveling without a male companion. A study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) this year documented a disproportionate drop in women’s employment in Afghanistan – 16% in the months immediately following the Taliban takeover. While these restrictions are getting harsher day by day, a new, all-male ministry of “Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” focused on enforcing the restrictions on women has been introduced.
Plenty of women have risen up to protest within different cities such as Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e- Sharif, Bamiyan, however, the Taliban would use every kind of physical violence such as beating, shooting, arresting directly or later on, and even sexual assault. While it is hard to obtain the exact data, 1,518 cases of violence against women have been documented between January and June this year. Overall, we can observe that after the Taliban takeover, women completely lost their fundamental rights.
Media and freedom of speech under the “Taliban 2.0”
When it comes to media and the flow of information, the Taliban has imposed strict restrictions to present the best version of themselves to the world. They passed new laws that limited the flow of information and freedom of expression despite their assurances of the contrary. Taliban also announced the “11 journalism rules” banning the publication of content against the regime’s values; punishments for this range from imprisonment, beating, or even death.
Over the past year, 40 percent of the media sources have shut down and 640,000 journalists have lost their jobs; more than 12 have been brutally killed. So far Taliban have made it very clear that they are not abiding by freedom of expression or human rights.
Minorities under the Taliban
After the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, different ethnic groups mainly Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks faced the huge risk of mass killing and displacement. After the takeover, Ahmad Massoud formed the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), an anti-Taliban military resistance in Panjshir. Taliban’s security forces have been violently arresting, torturing, assaulting, and executing the Tajiks in Panjshir and north of Afghanistan, committing war crimes. More than 170 civilians have been killed in the past year including men, women, and children. The Hazaras are another minority group that has been facing genocide by ISIS-KP and the Taliban simultaneously.
There are lots of other factors that need to be studied and evaluated but all of them will lead in one direction: The Taliban are nothing but a radical terrorist group. Even with the small amount of data in hand, it is clear as daylight that the Taliban have not changed even a little. In fact, they have become even more brutal. They are the same old Taliban, only now with even more power in hand, and a world sitting back and watching an entire country burn at their hands.