By Ellaha Mohammadi
The 2023 Doha meeting and the relevance of women more than a year and a half after its dramatic takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban was not invited to a high-level meeting about its governance of the country. The rare meeting, called by the United Nations and including over 20 country representatives last week, came to an end without a clear way forward on how to engage with the Taliban. Afghan women, who are the unwilling lightening rod of Taliban incompetence and who had called for a seat at the table, were also not invited. But they were indeed a focus.
Just days before the meeting, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the Taliban’s policies towards women. At the meeting, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said those same concerns remain a stumbling block to engagement. He said Afghanistan’s neighbours and other major nations at the meeting such as the United States, China, and Russia all wish to see a stabilised Afghanistan, but none broached recognition of the Taliban’s de facto government.
Considering what happened in Doha, it seems unlikely that there will be any resolution between the Taliban and the international community anytime soon. Many factors contribute to the Taliban’s failures at governance and their isolation from the international community, but it is clear that the plight and struggle of women is playing a significant role in their defeat on the global stage. The Taliban’s efforts to ostracise women is instead serving to ostracise the Taliban.
The Reality for Afghan Women
While this lack of recognition is seen as an achievement from those who oppose the Taliban’s policies, it does nothing to change the lives of millions of women and girls being held hostage by the group with neither the right to work nor access to an education. Their suffering is not merely a political disagreement. Taliban power has a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, second-to-second impact on the direction and meaning of women’s lives.
The nature of the Taliban’s enmity with women is fundamentally different from the group’s differences with other political forces. Women are being deprived of many of the most basic rights of human beings. The destructive effects of Taliban misogyny are widespread across millions of girls and women, and have a relentless sense of being never-ending. The stalemate of international legitimacy might be a bitter slap for the Taliban, but it does nothing to change the lives of women and girls confined at home. To change their situation, a woman’s only real choice is to fight.
Rethinking the Forms of Struggle
Accepting that the Taliban’s hostility towards women differs from their hostility towards other political forces, and acknowledging the complex and difficult nature of women’s struggle, we should examine the kinds of struggle available to women.
So far, the dominant forms of struggle have been civil and political, with the two primary modes of struggle being street protests or online protests at home and abroad, and advocating for women in political centers and institutions world-wide. Despite their impact, these forms of struggle have not been without issues.
Setting aside the obvious difficulties and limited scope of domestic protests, more promising political efforts and visits abroad have been highly scattered, arbitrary, and lacking in cohesiveness. Activists in this arena have never moved towards unifying forces, creating institutional frameworks, or establishing clear narratives and discourses about Afghan women. Individualistic behavior in a struggle of this size has had detrimental effects on trust building, and in some cases can lead to counter-struggle.
In contrast, there are causes beyond Afghanistan that provide exceptional examples of opportunities for advocacy at various levels, as demonstrated by the Iranian women’s movement and the forms of a cohesive message and struggle they have organized in Western countries.
To ensure the continuation of the struggle for Afghan women in the future, it is vital to reflect on and rectify these detrimental actions. Without coherence, coordination, and a clear narrative of the current situation, it is impossible to effectively mobilize the energy and resources available against the Taliban’s misogyny and ultimately achieve tangible results.
The Untapped Potential of Legal Struggle
Apart from civil protests and political struggles, the arena for legal struggles has been severely neglected. Although the Taliban’s actions to eliminate women are contrary to all existing legal standards in the modern world, no legal steps have been taken to try the Taliban leaders using existing legal capacities.
In comparison to the existing problems and difficulties, legal struggles are relatively low-risk and, if successful, can result in concrete and decisive achievements. It is important to remember that any foreign intervention or restrictions against the Taliban are only possible through existing legal frameworks.
The long-term perspective of the struggle to defend the rights of women should also explore the legal options available for struggle, understand how to use them, and identify cases that could be used to file lawsuits in international courts against the Taliban.
A Long and Complex Road Ahead
Preventing the legitimacy of the Taliban in practice does not lead to a change in the status of women. The Taliban seems impervious to being globally ostracised. Given that, tangible change in women’s lives does not seem imminent. What is clear is that any struggle with be a lengthy, complicated, and arduous journey ahead. The goals of the struggle must be focused on objectively changing the situation, and in this direction, there is a strong need for revision and reflection in order to find more effective methods and forms of struggle. These methods should complement one another, despite their diversity and dispersion, and ultimately lead to a unified goal.
