Taliban Pressure and the Heavy Shadow of Family

A number of women and girls say that alongside the Taliban’s increasing pressure and restrictions on women, family restrictions on them have also intensified. According to them, the Taliban’s harsh laws and the growing number of arrests by the group’s Vice and Virtue forces have led male family members to impose even stricter controls, effectively turning them into the Taliban’s unpaid soldiers.

These women and girls express concern over the current situation, saying that the rise in arrests of women by the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue forces has caused some men in their families to impose more limitations and shrink their personal freedoms day by day. Many now face obstacles or strict conditions even for leaving the house or attending family gatherings.

Kalthoum (pseudonym), a 24-year-old woman, says that although her brothers are educated, they had no interest in allowing her to continue her studies or work. Despite many difficulties, she managed to complete a two-year midwifery program. According to her, during this time she was beaten almost daily over one pretext or another.

She recalls:

“One day, when the car that carried us dropped me off near home, my classmates said goodbye. The moment I waved my hand, my brothers saw me and, on the pretext of how I dared to wave outside the house, both of them — each a year younger than me — beat me severely.”

She explains that the Taliban’s rise to power made her situation even worse:

“When the Taliban came, it was like giving an axe a handle. Now, even with full hijab, I’m not allowed to go out. They say I must not set foot outside the house.”

Freshta, another woman who was a student at Kabul University’s Faculty of Engineering, says that after much effort, she managed to enter this faculty despite her father’s and brother’s strong opposition to her studies. She adds that their insults and humiliations never stopped:

“Every time I picked up a book or worked on a project, I was met with contemptuous looks and words that tore at my soul.”

She emphasizes:

“They always said, ‘What’s engineering got to do with a girl? Are you a man?’ They’d say, ‘Not an engineer, an engi-maid!’ But I didn’t give up. Despite all this pressure, I succeeded and continued.”

Freshta says with sadness that after the fall of the Republic, some of her family members were happy — because now, using the Taliban as an excuse, they could impose even greater control over her life.

Zulfar, another woman, says her brothers always believed that an educated woman becomes rebellious. To them, she says, a literate woman is one who no longer obeys, a woman who steps outside the home and cannot be controlled. “If my father hadn’t supported me,” she says, “I might never have even set foot in school, let alone university.”

After the Taliban takeover, when she graduated from university, instead of congratulations or pride, one of her brothers brought her a cake with the words written in cream: ‘Happy House Arrest!’

Zulfar says:

“When I saw that writing, silent tears ran down my face. Now that the situation has changed and the Taliban are here, my brothers say: ‘Now the law is on our side.’ Every time I hear that sentence, I feel like I’ve been thrown back in time — back to the days when I had to fight for the simplest right, like education… even against my own family.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian has also reported that Afghan men are under pressure to force the women in their families to comply with the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue rules.

According to the report, many Afghan men — in order to prevent harassment of their female family members by the Taliban — act themselves like unpaid enforcers of the group’s rules.