By Hania Forotan
When the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, many women in Afghanistan kept wearing the burqa, even though they were no longer required to do so. The extremist group had only held sway for five years, but that was enough to change how people lived, and even how they thought.
As the Taliban enters the fifth year of its second stint in power this month, campaigners are warning that the draconian way in which it polices people’s lives risks again becoming normalised, especially when it comes to the treatment of women.
What followed the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in August 2021 was a brutal rewriting of women’s identity and place in the country. Measures the Taliban have systematically enforced in Afghanistan since their return to power include the banning of girls from schools and universities, severe restrictions on women’s work and social presence, compulsory veiling (burqa or enforced hijab), and the suppression of dissenting voices.
While there has been international criticism, the world’s response has been muted. A report published this month by Human Rights Watch to mark four years under the Taliban criticised the lack of international pressure, calling it “indirect legitimisation”. UN member states “have for four years failed to take effective action to end the egregious rights violations occurring in Afghanistan,” it said, urging governments to put more pressure on the Taliban and stop forcibly returning Afghans.
As people are forced to adapt, many may come to accept such conditions as part of daily reality out of fear, economic hardship, or psychological exhaustion, human rights activists are warning.
Dr Humaira Qaderi, an Afghan novelist and women’s rights activist who now lives in the U.S., believes that four years of poverty, desperation, youth disillusionment and forced migration and returns, have drained people’s collective energy. The Taliban have exploited these conditions and created psychological exhaustion, fostering the growth and acceptance of violence, she says.
“If this process continues, society will move towards the erasure of intellectual diversity and the normalisation of gender discrimination,” she told Rukhshana Media.
“The regime is now four years old. Give it another year, and we will enter the phase of adaptation. During the Taliban’s first rule, 25 years ago, we saw that even after the regime collapsed, women everywhere still wore the burqa. Why? Because they had adapted.”
Qaderi sees an increase in forced marriages and rising sexual violence in Afghanistan as running in parallel with this normalisation, and she says everyone from artists to educators has a role to play in resisting it. They can do this, she says, by preserving collective memory and awareness-raising through online education and underground schools.
Afghan Poet and activist Mazda Mehrgan was born in Kabul and now lives in Germany. She argues that traditional notions of female honour and the objectification of women as male property provide fertile ground for accepting violence.
“In a society where women are not recognised as equal human beings, violence against them has always been normal,” she told Rukhshana Media, adding that these historical beliefs have been codified by the Taliban in, for example, forced marriages or the ban on women in public spaces.
“A woman subjected to violence may think being beaten is her due. A man who inflicts violence believes it is a woman’s due,” she said.
Mehrgan referenced the concept of namus in Afghan culture, which is often translated as “honour”, but also invokes the idea that men have a responsibility for the behaviour of the women in their families. Under this idea, says Mehrgan, a woman “is not seen as a human being, so violence against women is not seen as violence against a person. That is why violence against women in Afghanistan has always been normal.”
The Taliban have enshrined this violence in law, she said, stressing the importance of storytelling in reminding people of the harms done and of women’s resistance.
Women’s rights advocates say that even if heightened awareness may not spark a revolution, it remains important because it guards against the disappearance of women becoming normal in the eyes of a younger generation that is growing up with it.
Since their return to power, the Taliban have passed dozens of decrees directly targeting women’s rights, including banning access to education, work, and even parks or public baths.
Batool Haidari, a clinical psychologist and women’s rights advocate, used to teach at Kabul University before the Taliban took power again and now lives in the UK. She , warns that these policies — reinforced by a judicial system that has no basis in legal principle — will gradually seep into social culture:
“The younger generation, especially teenagers, may come to see such restrictions as normal,” she said.
The exclusion of women from public life has already led to rising forced marriages, domestic violence, and suicides.
In some regions, people still want change but lack the means to resist. There is also a risk that people are becoming disheartened after four years of resistance without tangible results.
“If violence becomes part of daily life, even the new generation growing up under Taliban rule — adolescents at a formative stage of beliefs and behaviour — may see it as normal,” Haidari warned. “If this trend continues — as unfortunately it is — society will move towards complete normalisation of violence.”
Former journalist and poet Hoda Khamosh participated in protests against the Taliban in the initial days of the takeover and is now based in Norway. She says that years of war have conditioned people in Afghanistan to endure injustice to the extent that they might accept the Taliban action as normal.
“What has happened in the past four years is the habituation to violence and the normalisation of Taliban behaviour — to the point that their crimes appear ordinary and no one raises their voice.”
Schools are closed, women are whipped in the streets, raped, and subjected to countless other crimes. “Sadly,” said Khamosh, “all this shows that we are beginning to accept the Taliban and normalise their oppression — a trend that could turn into a societal norm in Afghanistan. This should be seriously worrying for the world.”
Any form of public protest is now highly dangerous given the repressive nature of the regime. But some see low-risk forms of protest — such as the recent ones staged from homes with limited resources — as key to keeping the message of resistance alive.
Khamosh told Rukhshana that the world’s silence amounts to acceptance of Taliban crimes.
“The world is waiting for a crisis moment to react,” she said. “Meanwhile, the Taliban’s actions are being normalised.”
