How is the UK helping women and girls in Afghanistan?

Some of the most stringent laws oppressing females today are beginning to be unveiled across Afghanistan. With the Taliban’s reestablishment of power only three years ago, the country’s marginalisation of women in the public sphere is accelerating.

The Taliban retook control over Afghanistan in 2021, two decades after being removed by US counterinsurgency operations. Since 2021, women’s lives have dramatically changed, and their freedoms have been severely limited, creating a country echoing dystopian fiction. The introduction of new laws has been justified by the government due to the apparent accordance with Islamic Sharia law. However, female students have revolted against them. One student said to the BBC: “The Taliban have taken the rights that Islam and Allah have given to us.”

Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has released new ‘vice and virtue’ laws which have been enforced across the entire country. The new laws have devolved power into the hands of the Taliban’s Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry, which has predominantly affected the personal and public lives of women living in Afghanistan.

“Our sisters’ education is an important issue. We’re trying to resolve this issue which is the demand of a lot of our sisters”

Hamdullah Fitrat

Girls over the age of ten have had the right to education stripped away with the restrictions for girls’ secondary schools first endorsed in September 2021. At the time, a 17-year-old student in Kabul told the BBC: “For 11 years, despite the risk of violence, I worked hard so I could become a doctor. I’m devastated.” Women’s educational policy has remained controversial within the Taliban causing factional divides within the government. When the topic was raised to the deputy spokesman of the government, Hamdullah Fitrat, he stated: “Our sisters’ education is an important issue. We’re trying to resolve this issue which is the demand of a lot of our sisters.” However, after three years of perpetual waiting many Afghan women have lost hope that the ban on education will ever retract.

It was announced that female employees in the Kabul administration were to stay at home unless their jobs could not be performed by male employees. Activists took to the streets but were met with violence from the Taliban authorities. In January 2022 four female activists were detained.

The day-to-day activities that were once enjoyed by Afghan women became severely limited. Women cannot travel further than 45 miles without a close male relative. Moreover, dress codes were introduced in May 2022 stating that, in public only women’s eyes should be the only visible. Women who once wore colourful tunics and heels have now converted to long, black abayas. Taking a harrowing turn, the ‘vice and virtue laws’ have now condemned women from talking and singing in public or out loud in their own homes. Their gazes cannot extend to any man to whom are not blood-related or married. Women’s complete disappearance from the public sphere in Afghanistan is one of the most severe gender apartheid cases in the world currently.

“If we can’t speak, why even live? We’re like dead bodies moving around”

Shabana

Shabana, a student in Afghanistan, decided to stop her daily English lessons due to the introduction of the new law as she was frightened that she would speak English in public. She told to the BBC, “If we can’t speak, why even live? We’re like dead bodies moving around.” A psychologist in Afghanistan who is working in a network of secret schools is fearful of the growing ‘pandemic of suicidal thoughts’. In opposition to the government, some women have taken to social media to show their dissidence, posting videos of themselves singing about freedom, with lines such as “let’s walk together holding hands and become free of this cruelty.”

Simon Biggins, a former British Army Officer with service in Afghanistan, has written a pledge to help the Afghan girls and women. Biggins has suggested the widening of the criteria for the Afghan Civil Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) to foster girls who have been excluded from higher education. Launched in January 2022, the ACRS is seeking to provide safety for vulnerable Afghan people by granting them settlement in the UK. By March 2024, 11,500 people had arrived in the UK under the scheme. He also urged the BBC World Service to use their resources to offer women a comprehensive distance-learning package. “It will not be easy for them to get out” Biggins states, but “it is not impossible”.

The UK has already welcomed 19 trainee doctors from Afghanistan into Scotland to ensure they finish their studies. The Linda Norgrove Foundation has worked alongside UK government officials to arrange student visas and medical school places for women. The foundation was created in memory of Linda Norgrove, a Scottish charity worker who was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Her parents have used this foundation to create a safe space for vulnerable women. Scottish ministers have been able to adapt the law to grant the women a home student status, meaning they receive free tuition. One of the students, Omulbanin Sultani, disclosed that although she “endured a thousand days of suffering to reach this point”, the foundation has “saved our lives in every sense of the word”. The students hope that once they spend several years finishing their studies in the UK, the perilous situation in Afghanistan will have lessened meaning they can return to their home country.

The virtue laws in Afghanistan have drastically changed the lives of women and girls across the nation in order to subjugate them. UK intervention and aid to women is helping to re-empower them.