A woman’s voice

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: silencing women in Afghanistan.

Last month, the Taliban instituted another round of what they call “morality” laws. Since the U.S. pulled out in 2021, the Taliban has chipped away at women’s rights… keeping girls from education, restricting women’s movements, and imposing a strict dress code… but this new round went a step further. According to the Taliban, women should not be heard outside the home.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The Taliban leader says he’s just enforcing sharia law, but other Muslim scholars warn that these restrictions go further than any other Muslim country and are not consistent with the Quran.

What does it look like on the ground in Afghanistan for women and what will it take to help them? WORLD Radio’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: This Afghan woman posted a video of herself singing. Fully veiled in black, she sings: “will you seal the silence of the mouth until the silent order?”

WOMAN: My voice is not aurat…

She says her voice is not ‘aurat’—which means it doesn’t need to be hidden from unrelated men. She’s not alone.

Hundreds of women inside and outside of Afghanistan are singing in defiance of the Taliban’s new rules.

Eli Omar works for Uplift Afghanistan Fund. She was in the country in August.

ELI OMAR: You will hear people saying, going back to Afghanistan, we can travel now, but and you know, visit and explore the country, but, but that comes as at a cost, and the cost is the rights and freedoms of women and girls.

The country has been divided by conflicts for decades, whether their own or as a proxy war between other nations. By now, Omar says Afghans are used to it. Mostly.

OMAR: Afghan people, they get up every morning, they go to work, they feed their families. They live like you and I do.

But Omar says the Taliban that took over in 2021 is different from previous regimes… especially in its treatment of women and girls.

Women have to cover every inch of their bodies. They cannot leave their home without a male escort… not even to work in the fields. They can’t get an education past the sixth grade. And now, they can’t even be heard outside their homes.

Breaking these rules—whether intentionally or not—can lead to imprisonment, beatings, or worse.

Omar says since the Taliban took over again three years ago, there has been a heaviness over the country.

OMAR: There are no jobs and the economic hardship faced by people is something that's very palpable and very visible.

So why is this new regime targeting women and girls, and can anyone fix it?

MICHAEL SEMPLE: On one level, it's the same old Taliban movement.

Michael Semple is a professor at the Senator George Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. He says the people in power now are largely the same as before the U.S. invaded… But they’ve changed their priorities.

SEMPLE: Funnily enough, a lot of the the veterans who now in the middle ages, they're sort of at that stage in life where they think it's time to set something aside for retirement. And basically, they've gone materialistic.

He says that materialism means Taliban officials are not idealistic enough to stand up to the leader of the Taliban, the Amir. Even though some think the oppression of women and girls is casting them in a bad light on the global stage.

SEMPLE: The most authoritative scholars of the the Sunni Muslim world consider these Taliban pronouncements, as you know, as being completely groundless, lacking any scriptural basis.

He says Taliban officials don’t want to give up their lucrative, safe positions for an idealistic cause… But they will defy the Amir for financial gain.

For example, the Amir pledged to stop the cultivation and trafficking of narcotics after he took power… but that hasn’t stopped officials from profiting.

SEMPLE: Most of the Taliban leaders simply bought up the opium stocks… So they've all made a killing from that. A lot of them are involved in owning or protecting and benefiting from heroin labs.

But that silence may come back to bite them.

So far, resistance has been unorganized, and authorities have cracked down hard. But Semple says any resistance that can get organized would likely have a lot of support and ready fighters… but Semple says that means potential leaders inside the country feel stuck.

SEMPLE: Conventional political figures in Afghanistan calculate that you can only succeed in any movement in Afghanistan if you have the backing of an external power. And until you have the backing of an external power, there's really no point in doing anything, because you're bound to fail.

If the Taliban continues to clamp down, Semple says a leader may emerge who can get enough backing to overthrow the Taliban and ease the burden on Afghans… without international help.

People have also staged protests over things like not being able to collect nuts in the forest.

SEMPLE: Generally the Taliban have they arrested a few people, but they haven't committed mass murder, and that may encourage other people to have a try.

Semple says some kind of uprising, whether civic or armed, is likely the only way for Afghans to help themselves.

But until then, people like Omar are working quietly on the ground to help Afghans with practical needs.

Omar went to an Afghanistan village to help build houses after a round of earthquakes last year. She met a father and his two-year-old daughter. They both had burns on their faces.

OMAR: I could see in this man, in this father’s eyes, how desperate he was.

She says some people see Afghans as harsh, dangerous, and misogynistic… and some are. But many are like this father, desperate to help his family.

OMAR: I've met plenty of men who love their wives and love their girls… they're just like you and I.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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