Taliban Allow Small Women’s Protests for Show, Ignore Demands

Afghanistan’s Taliban allowed a small group of women’s rights activists to stage a protest in Kabul on Thursday despite having largely suppressed the liberties advocated by the feminists — such as the right to “work, freedom, and equality” — since seizing control of the country in mid-August.

Dozens of Afghan women marched from Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw Park to the grounds of a United Nations (U.N.) office building in the capital on the morning of December 16 to advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

“They chanted slogans calling for food, work, freedom and equality,” according to Tolo News, which operates both a television channel and news website in Afghanistan.

The protesters demanded “the right to education, jobs and political representation from the Taliban government,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Thursday.

“Although public protests are effectively banned by Afghanistan’s new hardline rulers, [Taliban] authorities gave permission for the march,” AFP noted.

The Taliban welcomed media coverage of the staged demonstration on December 16, even going so far as to provide an ostensibly supportive soundbite to Tolo News on the matter.

“The Islamic Emirate reiterated its pledge to ensure women’s rights under the Islamic Regulation,” the news site reported on Thursday after speaking with Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi.

The Islamic Emirate is the Taliban’s official name for Afghanistan. The Sunni fundamentalist group previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 under a system of sharia, or Islamic law, and recently reimposed this form of “Islamic Regulation” on the country’s citizens when it seized political power in Kabul four months ago. The strict system includes a ban on girls and women attending school and working.

Women have been “largely excluded from government employment and secondary school education” under the Taliban’s most recent rule, AFP observed on December 16. Taliban deputy spokesman Karimi acknowledged this fact on Thursday during his interview with Tolo News.

“The women who worked in the government departments are not dismissed. Their salaries will be paid. No one was dismissed as of now,” he said. Karimi referred to employees of Kabul’s U.S.-backed government, which the Taliban deposed on August 15.

Participants of Kabul’s December 16 women’s rights demonstration told AFP they “remained in fear of the country’s new rulers” despite being allowed to stage a protest before domestic and foreign media.

“At one intersection Taliban fighters cocked and raised their weapons, but the march was allowed to continue,” the international news agency observed.

“Fear is always there, but we cannot live in fear — we have to fight against our fear,” Shahera Kohistan, a 28-year-old Afghan woman who marched in Thursday’s demonstration, told AFP.