Fall from grace

To utter horror, the Taliban announced that they were determined to ban girls from going to school. They further stated that Afghan women would now not be permitted to travel outside the country without the presence or permission of a male relative. With these two announcements, all the progress that Afghan women may have made over the past two decades stands evaporated.

Currently, Afghan women stand at one of the most heartbreaking crossroads in history. Their country has not only been devastated by the US occupation and the misery that ensued but also that half the population has effectively been left out, erased and silenced. Afghan women now cannot participate in the rebuilding of the country that is so urgently required. This is one of the darkest chapters for the women in Afghanistan -- once known for so much abundance and prosperity. Further, American and other aid agencies have abandoned all aid programmes worth hundreds of millions of dollars which remain unexplained. They too have to apportion the blame.

Prof Mohsin Amin, a policy analyst belonging to Afghanistan, presented an apt summation of the situation in 'Washington Post' that the Americans left behind, saying that it would be the equivalent of dissolving the Federal Reserve Bank of the US and then telling everyone that their weekly cash withdrawal limit was less than USD 400. Amin estimates that at the time the US stopped, at least 75 per cent of the Afghan government's spending came from foreign aid. Not only did the US freeze over USD 9 billion in assets held by the central bank in Afghanistan, but they also told international aid agencies, such as the IMF, the World Bank and other institutions, that they had to immediately stop their operations in Afghanistan. However, Amin cannot put the entire blame on the US alone but also hold the Taliban leadership to account.

Importantly, the consequences of all this have been disastrous, and unsurprisingly, it is the Afghan women who have borne the brunt. The sudden cut in funding to health programmes for women has been felt most acutely, with sharp drops in the number of women who can access healthcare facilities during maternity. When the lives of women are throttled from all sides, they are left with very few options. When the Americans arrived, in the style of swashbuckling heroes, to free Afghan women from all that had made their lives miserable, too many trusted them.

Meanwhile, of late, there has been criticism that some Afghans, who are seen as 'secular', were able to position themselves as cultural facilitators who advised on many projects and made considerable money. This cannot be isolated from the recent ban on women's education.

Significantly, analysts feel that the Taliban have made their own calculations. After an initial period of trying to be palatable to the international community, they have now decided that there is nothing in it. The international community could have taken advantage of the Taliban's original pliability by obtaining some concessions regarding women's rights, but it appears that this priority was on nobody's mind. It is possible that if a charter of demands were drawn up which would unfreeze Afghanistan's reserve currency and aid flows to programmes for women, then girls' schools and health clinics could have been kept open.

Instead of a proxy war in Afghanistan, the great powers are now thumbing their nose at each other directly. This does not bode well for any Afghan — least of all for the Afghan women who stand betrayed by everyone and were held hostage, first by the Taliban and their idiocy and then by a US/NATO invasion that used them as pawns for their own strategic objectives. Now, they are back to being used by the Taliban again, except this time, they have to contend with not just the Taliban's desire to control women but also the despair that comes from having known some small bit of freedom. This is very well articulated by Afghan watchers and Pakistan daily 'Dawn' has carried it rather prominently airing the existing plight of Afghan women.

In the meantime, Pakistani activist for female education and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai spoke on the issue of Afghan girls being denied education, calling it a devastating day for Afghan girls. Yousafzai, who survived an attack by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2012, described to BBC that most of the women were sceptical when the Taliban made a promise that they would allow girls to go to school. She expected that the Taliban will continue to make excuses to prevent girls from learning. She also apprehends that the Taliban would use repeated excuses like uniforms, walking to school, separation, segregated classrooms and female teachers. She said that in Afghanistan where women are held back from education, the nation will not see peace and progress. Malala reckons that the Taliban did not keep their promise as they saw a threat in educating girls and empowering women.

In a related development, during a recent mock interview conducted for some civil service aspirants, a woman candidate when asked if she had any thought to pressurize the Taliban to lift the ban on female education in Afghanistan, she quipped that India and Pakistan should mobilize international public opinion and make a pre-condition for Taliban political leadership that their regime will be recognized and handsome grant renewed it they lifted the ban. This shows that womenfolk feeling agitated over the Taliban ban and the world should think of seriously carrying forward one-point agenda in mounting more pressure on the fledgling Afghan government solely in the interest of the Afghan women

The writer is a retired IPS officer, a security analyst and a former National Security Advisor to the PM of Mauritius. Views expressed are personal