Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Don’t Betray the Women of Afghanistan

Published in News

Normalizing Relations With the Taliban Normalizes Female Suffering

 By: Lisa Curtis and Hadeia Amiry

A human rights calamity is unfolding in Afghanistan. Since retaking power in mid-2021, the Taliban have implemented more extreme policies against women than any other regime in the world. Taliban leaders have issued over 90 edicts limiting women’s rights: they have banned women and girls from attending university or school beyond the sixth grade, restricted their access to health care, prohibited them from leaving home without a male guardian, and revoked many of their social and legal protections. Every new restriction on Afghan women strengthens the Taliban’s dictatorial grip on the entire Afghan population and feeds extremism in a society already occupied by dozens of terrorist groups. Although the Taliban are fighting the terrorist group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), they allow some 20 other terrorist groups to operate freely in Afghan territory.

Yet even though Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits women’s education, some analysts are urging the United States to normalize ties with the Taliban, including by reopening a U.S. embassy in the country. These proponents argue that by doing so, Washington would improve its ability to monitor assistance programs and engage with Taliban leaders in the country, including to press them to moderate their policies. But taking steps to normalize relations with the Taliban before their leaders halt their systematic persecution of women would be a gross betrayal of the millions of women and girls whose lives the United States helped to transform over two decades. During the Taliban’s previous stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, they closed schools to girls, forbade women to work, and targeted women with extreme forms of punishment, including public floggings and executions.

From 2002 to 2021, however, during the U.S.-led NATO mission to stabilize Afghanistan, Afghan women served as cabinet ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians, diplomats, and journalists, reflecting historic levels of involvement in society. It is fair to say that empowering women represents the best work the United States did in Afghanistan and its most positive legacy. In early 2021, months before the U.S. military withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover, 2.5 million Afghan girls were attending primary school, and 27 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament were held by women.

Published in News

By Meta Mehran

Ever since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 with promises that — this time — they would be more moderate, they have played a deceitful game.

The Taliban government has introduced one decree after another, incrementally stripping away the rights of women and girls to education, employment, justice, freedom of speech and movement, and it has progressively criminalized their existence outside the home. Taliban leaders reached a new low last month when they published rules that, among other restrictions, make it illegal for a woman’s voice to be heard by male strangers in public.

Each new tightening of the screw has sparked international condemnation — but no real consequences for the Taliban. The mullahs merely wait for the outrage to subside before further entrenching their misogynist rule, undeterred by criticism, the threat of repercussions for violating international laws or even the risk of losing badly needed humanitarian aid.

But a potential new international treaty covering the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity may finally provide the world with more legal and diplomatic leverage — and a new way to hold the Taliban to account for the repression they have unleashed upon millions of women in Afghanistan. This is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

In October, a U.N. General Assembly legal committee will meet to decide whether the treaty should move forward to the stage of formal negotiations. The effort to create a better tool for prosecuting crimes against humanity has gained momentum because of growing alarm over conflicts in places such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Gaza, and the treaty includes a proposal to criminalize “gender apartheid.”

Fueled by the Taliban’s actions, the notion of making persons and states that enforce gender apartheid liable for criminal prosecution has gained global traction. Last October, I joined nearly 100 prominent organizations, jurists and individuals, including the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, in signing a legal brief that defines gender apartheid as the institutionalized, systematic subjugation of one gender. The brief urges U.N. member states to codify it as a crime against humanity in the proposed treaty. Many countries have indicated support for the proposal.

There is no better way to describe what Afghanistan’s women face than gender apartheid. Over the past three years, the Taliban have issued dozens of edicts curtailing or eliminating the basic rights of women and girls, while abolishing laws and agencies that were dedicated to protecting those rights. The former Ministry of Women’s Affairs, for example, was disbanded by the Taliban and its building handed over to a reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces the current government’s hard-line interpretation of Shariah law.

Today, even when a woman is accompanied outdoors by a male relative as required by law, judgments on the legality of her dress, behavior — and now even her voice — are at the total discretion of the Taliban’s ever-present morality enforcers. If one of them deems that a violation has occurred, a woman can be taken into custody, where many have reportedly been subjected to torture and rape. Afghanistan’s women now suffer from one of the world’s highest rates of gender-based violence, according to the United Nations. Women who complain about such violence have been sent to prison.

Women are now effectively confined at home and to the only roles deemed by the mullahs to be appropriate for them: caregiving and childbearing. Since men can be punished by the Taliban if their female family members break the rules, women are, in practice, under the strict control of their own male relatives. All of this is counterproductive for the nation: By banning women from working outside the home, including as aid workers, the Taliban are harming the country’s economy and compounding its severe humanitarian crisis.

 The Taliban’s new rules drag women even deeper into an abyss that seems to have no bottom. Besides muzzling women in public, the rules require women to completely conceal their faces and bodies and place new restrictions on their freedom of movement. I left Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, but my work as an activist in exile keeps me in contact with many women still there who tell me that the latest rules add to the hurdles they face in getting access to even their most basic needs. As one woman recently said to me, even speaking to a shopkeeper to buy food is fraught when her voice is now considered “awrah” — a term referring to the intimate parts of the body that must be concealed to avoid tempting and morally corrupting others.

The codification of gender apartheid in international law will of course not automatically eliminate the crime, and bringing perpetrators to account will not be easy. But it’s an important first step toward providing victims and the global community with legal pathways to hold violators responsible and to deter other governments from committing the same crimes.

Beyond the legal aspect, international recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity would have great moral power. The global condemnation of South Africa’s former apartheid regime galvanized political, legal and social resistance efforts that ultimately contributed to that system’s demise and later resulted in racial apartheid being classified as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

There is still much work to be done. If the U.N. committee agrees to move the treaty to the next phase, a range of legal and other issues will have to be worked out, including the potential inclusion of gender apartheid as a crime, and the treaty would need to be ratified internationally.

Several countries already have expressed in previous committee meetings their openness to codifying gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. For this to become a legal reality, many more nations will need to step up and join in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan, particularly those countries that claim to be leaders on women’s rights or have female heads of state.

The alternative is to continue on the current path, in which the world wrings its hands but essentially does nothing to stop the Taliban from rendering Afghanistan’s women faceless, silent and invisible.
 
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On December 19th, 2023, at 7:30 PM IST, ASIA Spotlight Session has invited the renowned Prof. S Fredrick Starr, who elaborated on his acclaimed book, "The Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane." Moderated by Prof. Amogh Rai, Research Director at ASIA, the discussion unveiled the fascinating, yet lesser-known narrative of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment.

The book sheds light on the remarkable minds from the Persianate and Turkic peoples, spanning from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang, China. "Lost Enlightenment" narrates how, between 800 and 1200, Central Asia pioneered global trade, economic development, urban sophistication, artistic refinement, and, most importantly, knowledge advancement across various fields. Explore the captivating journey that built a bridge to the modern world.

To know watch the full conversation: #centralasia #goldenage #arabconquest #tamerlane #medievalenlightment #turkish #economicdevelopment #globaltrade

Click here to watch on YouTube or scroll down to watch the full panel discussion.

Published in News

Whether Russian President Vladimir Putin dies in office, is ousted in a palace coup, or relinquishes power for some unforeseen reason, the United States and its allies would face a radically different Russia with the Kremlin under new management. The geopolitical stakes mean that policymakers would be negligent not to plan for the consequences of a post-Putin Russia. On November 2, 2023, CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr joined a panel organized by the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia for a discussion on how US and allied policymakers can prepare for a Russia after Putin.

Click here to watch on YouTube or scroll down to watch the full panel discussion.

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