The Aftermath

Girls have been banned from school after sixth grade. Women are mandated to be fully covered except for their eyes. Female employment has virtually disappeared. Peter Van Agtmael reports and photographs from Afghanistan, where the Taliban have spent the past year erasing women from public life Juharan

- By Peter Van Agtmael

ONE NATION, UNDER MEN Members of the Taliban in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan park at sunset.

In August 2021, after US forces had hastily departed Afghanistan, the leaders of the Taliban held their first press conference since completing the conquest of the country. For the first time in years, it seemed, the world’s attention was focused on the war-torn nation.

In a break with the past, the Taliban spokesman vowed to honor women’s rights within our framework of Sharia law].” A Taliban official agreed to be interviewed by a female TV journalist. This apparently conciliatory attitude came as a surprise to many, given the lack of guarantees for women’s rights in the fine print of the peace deal that the US and the Taliban had negotiated the year before. Many hoped that the more moderate elements of the Taliban would now be dictating policy—and that the hardfought gains over the previous 20 years would be at least partially upheld. The months that followed dashed these expectations.

On a recent trip to Afghanistan, it was clear to me that the erasure of women from public life is well under way. Edicts have been passed banning girls from school after the sixth grade. Women are now mandated to be fully covered except for their eyes. Female employment has virtually disappeared, though women still work as doctors and surgeons; without them, the hospitals would not be able to keep up with demand. True, in rural Afghanistan, where nearly 80 percent of the population resides, women had seen little progress for decades despite the meaningful strides their counterparts had experienced in urban centers. Such advances, however, have largely disappeared in the past year.