By: Zabi Balkhi
As the sun rises, Nahid*, a 26-year-old cosmetics vendor in the Khadijatul Kobra Market, begins her daily routine. Ahead of her is an hour-long trek to reach her shop in the Taliban’s recently-established marketplace for women. Nahid forgoes a taxi through Mazar-e-Sharif city because she isn’t making money.
” There are days when I fail to sell enough to even cover my taxi fare,” Nahid says, revealing the grim picture of the professional opportunities the Taliban say they’re providing for women in Balkh province.
On March 14, the Taliban unveiled the Khadijatul Kobra market, spruiking it as a designated business zone for women to set up shop. But the promise of allowing women to work and earn an income is falling short. Despite the eagerness of the shop-owners and saleswomen, the market is eerily empty of customers.
In the days before the Taliban banned women from selling in Mazar’s central City Walk market, Nahid says her daily earnings sometimes reached up to 4,000 afghanis. Now, she frequently grapples with paltry earnings of less than a dollar. “City Walk market was conveniently located inside the city, offering us a decent daily income,” Nahid says. “This new market, however, is in a less accessible location. Many days we sit from dawn to dusk and barely manage to earn 100 afghanis.”
A graduate of Balkh University, Nahid has been selling cosmetics in Mazar-e-Sharif for three years. As she meticulously arranges her shop, she narrates her journey since her father’s death four years ago. Thrust into the role of the sole provider for her six- member family, Nahid is struggling to meet their needs. “I pursued my studies in the hope of securing a good job and leading a comfortable life,” she says. “Sadly, that dream remains unfulfilled. I turned to sales after my father’s death to support my family. And I started finding happiness in that work, only to have it ripped away.”
The Taliban’s ascension to power has seen a raft of restrictions imposed on women. Their participation in public and private organizations has been significantly curtailed, although they were allowed to work in city shops under strict regulations. Nahid, like many other women, complied with the Taliban rules in the City Walk market, including wearing the dictated hijab. It was not without it complications, as the Taliban’s vice and virtue police frequently found fault with the women.
The Taliban’s decision to relocate the women shopkeepers from the city entirely has come at a massive cost. Nahid says she had invested nearly 100,000 afghanis in her cosmetics business in the City Walk market. The ban on women working in the city prompted her to redirect her capital to the new market for women. “The Taliban built this market for us, but they placed it far from the city center, where fewer people venture and women prefer to shop,” she explains.
According to Nahid, every passing day decreases the shelf-life of her unsold cosmetics, making her situation even more stressful. Closing her shop at four in the afternoon, she admits, “Since morning, I’ve only managed to sell two lipsticks. How can I possibly meet my family’s needs with just 60 afghanis?”
Nahid also shares that the Taliban’s trade department officials in Balkh promised the women sellers there would be a media campaign to increase the market’s visibility. But despite these assurances, the promises remain unfulfilled.
With the arrival of the Taliban, the business landscape for women underwent a drastic transformation. Saleswomen and girls, once a common sight in various commercial markets of Mazar-e-Sharif, were suddenly stripped of their livelihoods and ease of movement due to the barrage of restrictions imposed on them and the penchant of the morality police for finding fault with them. The women have fought back hard for their rights, protesting and raising their voices wherever possible, and at great risk to themselves. Finally, in either an apparent attempt to appease the demographic or win favour with critics, the Taliban opened the women-only market, in Khadijatul Kobra, in the province.
The market, located on Abu Ali Sinai Balkhi regional hospital road, boasts about 200 shops allocated to women. But despite a significant number of women engaged in various businesses, many voice their dissatisfaction with the declining sales and mounting pressures of their work not covering costs.
During the market’s inauguration in March, Taliban officials in Balkh province announced their support for women’s work, directly contradicting their policy of barring women from local and international organizations. “Our government has demonstrated to the whole world that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan does not oppose women’s work and business,” declared Mufti Nasrullah Hotak, the spokesman of the Taliban’s vice and virtue department in Balkh province.
Despite these public proclamations, several businesswomen describe the initiative as mere posturing when faced with the market’s sparse customers and dismal sales, in some cases forcing them to close shop altogether.
“The market was built in the name of women and it is located in an isolated place where there are no customers,” says Zohal*, a 28-year-old cosmetics vendor. “This is how they force us to stop working by our own choice.”
Zohal is single-handedly raising her two children with earnings from her shop, after a failed marriage and subsequent divorce. The poor sales and lack of customers at the Khadijatul Kobra market have affected her deeply. “I come in the morning, hoping to see customers at the door of my shop, but it remains empty,” she says. “On the days when I don’t make a single sale, I sit in my shop and cry before returning home.”
It’s been days since Zohal couldn’t buy anything for her two children. “What can I do if I don’t have money?” she says. “I don’t know when we women will get rid of this pain and suffering.”
But despite the poor sales, Zohal feels she needs to continue as she has no other options to earn an income and she invested 50,000 afghanis to set up the shop.
While the market is filled with disillusioned vendors like Nahid and Zohal, potential customers choose to shop elsewhere due to the market’s inconvenient location. Najia,
a local shopper, prefers the Lailami shops in Mazar-e-Sharif city that offer everything she needs.
“The women’s market is far. We have everything we want in Lailami shops. From clothes to cosmetics, we can buy everything we need here,” she says, adding that the distance to Khadijatul Kobra is also complicated given the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s travel.
For Nafisa*, formerly a first-year student at Balkh University’s Faculty of Islamic Sharia, opening a shop was an opportunity to do something after the Taliban closed the universities to girls and women.
“When the university closed, I lost all hope. But I decided to make an earning for myself and start selling. Because I had just started the business, I did not put a lot of materials in my shop; But even the few clothes that I brought to the shop for sale have remained until now and nothing has been sold,” the 20-year-old says.
Some observers agree the Taliban’s initiative as a symbolic gesture to gain legitimacy and retain power. Hussain Amiri, a sociologist currently residing outside Afghanistan, emphasizes the Taliban’s ideology to exclude women from social spaces. “Their weak ideological footing could possibly lead to the Taliban’s downfall again,” he says. “They’ve failed to secure domestic and international legitimacy in nearly two years. The symbolic creation of special jobs for women appears to be their desperate attempt to gain international approval.”
*Names have been changed to protect identities.
