Women, War, and Will: Gender Apartheid and State Insecurity in Afghanistan

Claire Scafidi

Introduction 

The trajectory of women’s rights in Afghanistan has fluctuated significantly in the past century.  In 1919, Afghan women gained the right to vote, and in 1921, the first girls' school opened. In 1950, the purdah system of gender segregation and veiling practices was eliminated. However, following decades of civil war, interstate conflict, and insurgency, women’s rights have severely deteriorated in Afghanistan since 1950. From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist insurgent group, controlled the majority of Afghanistan, denying women fundamental rights, such as education, employment, and freedom of movement. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States' involvement in the region and the rewriting of the Afghan Constitution removed formal barriers for women, but social, cultural, and religious barriers prevented actual progress. Consequently, the reinstatement of the Taliban in 2021 led to an extreme reversion in legal rights and freedoms, instating a ‘gender apartheid,’ contributing to the escalating humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan today. 

Background: Conflict in Afghanistan 

USSR Involvement

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, starting the Soviet-Afghan War that ended in 1989. The USSR aimed to prop up the communist government under the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held communist regimes responsible for upholding other communist regimes. Under the communist regime, women’s rights to education and employment were improved. However, 2.8 million Afghans became refugees in Pakistan and 1.5 million in Iran during the war, undermining women’s security. Following the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan Civil War broke out among Mujahideen factions, militant Islamic groups. During the Afghan Civil War, the gains in women’s rights were primarily reversed. 

U.S. Involvement

In October 2001, one month after 9/11, the United States, alongside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), invaded Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban government and installing the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). In 2004, a new constitution was adopted that called for women's equality. In 2014, NATO and the United States officially ended their combat mission in Afghanistan, and the United States formally evacuated in 2021. In February 2020, the United States negotiated the Doha Agreement with the Taliban, creating a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops with the promise that the Taliban would prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a training ground. However, in peace talks with the Taliban, the United States neglected the inclusion of women and the Afghan Government, worsening the security of vulnerable groups. On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took over the Afghan capital Kabul, re-establishing their current regime with the collapse of the Ghani Government. According to the Doha Agreement, the United States would withdraw in September 2021, but the process accelerated due to an escalation of violence, and the United States fully evacuated by August 31st. 

Situation Today

The Taliban has established relations with states such as China, Pakistan, and Russia, increasing the legitimacy of their rule. Mass executions, floggings, and amputations have been reinstated as state-sanctioned punishments. Decades of war, combined with climate change, are creating a humanitarian disaster, with 95% of households experiencing food scarcity. Furthermore, international sanctions and inflation have devastated the Afghan economy. ISIS-K, or the Islamic State - Khorasan Province, is a branch of the Islamic State, operating since 2015 in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia. Despite the Doha Agreement, the Taliban have been unable to prevent the use of Afghanistan as a training ground for terrorist organizations, and ISIS-K attacks are compounding the dire humanitarian situation. 

Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

Today, women and girls cannot seek education after sixth grade. Women’s employment is largely restricted, and in public-facing sectors, banned. Women are no longer able to travel alone and must leave the house with a male family member as a chaperone. Civil society activities, such as playing sports or going to the park, are prohibited for women. Restrictions against women have increased in intensity, with women’s voices banned from being heard in public and the removal of windows in homes in which women might be seen. Women who protest are punished harshly, in some cases, forcibly disappeared. 

Healthcare is becoming increasingly inaccessible to Afghan women, as some women are turned away from clinics because of their gender. In some regions, women can only be treated by women, but women are currently banned from pursuing higher education. The lack of access to healthcare is causing rising maternal mortality rates. Furthermore, the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s activity and movement are causing a severe mental health crisis due to women and girls being isolated in their homes. By 2026, the rates of adolescent childbearing are expected to increase by 45% and maternal mortality by 50%. 

Despite Afghanistan facing an economic crisis, 78% of young Afghan women are not educated, employed, or being trained. Allowing women’s secondary education could increase the gross domestic product by 2.5%. Additionally, the Taliban is restricting aid organizations by disallowing the mention of women in documents and the hiring of women, forcing women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to stop operating. The rate of forced child marriage is increasing due to economic hardship and the lack of state security. Women’s political participation has disappeared descriptively and substantively.

Afghanistan is a highly patrilineal society in which wealth, identity, and security pass down the male line. In states such as Afghanistan, where the rule of law is weak, kinship structures are relied upon for security. Therefore, women become crucial tokens of security, symbols of alliances, and producers of sons. Kinship hierarchies also reinforce gender stereotypes about the role of women in the private sphere. During civil war and insurgency, the importance of kinship is highlighted as family is relied upon for physical and economic security. Therefore, the rights of women and girls become increasingly constricted as insecurity increases, and the pressure for familial alliances through marriage and the production of sons becomes key for survival.

Gender Apartheid

Afghan Activist Simar Samar termed the systematic oppression of women under the first Taliban government “gender apartheid.” The Taliban’s laws seek to erase women from the public, and the dehumanization of women is both systematic and structural. The lack of security, weak rule of law, and emphasis on patrilineality contributed to the development of gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Gender apartheid is defined as “economic and social sexual discrimination against individuals because of their gender or sex.” However, gender apartheid is not a crime against humanity under international law, demonstrating the substantive lack of protection for women and girls. 

The Rome Statute, which establishes the International Criminal Court, labels apartheid as a crime against humanity, establishing a legal basis for the incorporation of gender apartheid. The Doha Process, three international meetings facilitated by the United Nations to solve the crisis in Afghanistan, excluded women. The third Doha Meeting involved the Taliban and excluded the topic of human rights as well, highlighting the need for protection of women and girls at the international level. Currently, the draft Crimes Against Humanity treaty is being negotiated at the United Nations General Assembly, where an amendment to include gender apartheid has been proposed. Afghanistan signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1980 and ratified it in 2003. Afghanistan’s ratification of CEDAW demonstrates a fundamental question consistently highlighted in the study of international law: Are international laws effective? The lack of international response by the international community sends a signal that the dehumanization of women is tolerable. However, the incorporation of gender apartheid into international law would prevent states from brushing off the Taliban’s discrimination as cultural or religious. 

Conclusion 

The inclusion of gender apartheid protections in international law will allow Afghan women and civil society organizations to utilize the boomerang effect. The boomerang effect determines how human rights organizations and NGOs can call upon third parties, international law, and the community to pressure their government to improve human rights conditions. Afghan NGOs would be able to point to gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, compelling states to pressure the Taliban. Furthermore, by recognizing the systematic erasure of women and girls as a crime against humanity, the suffering of Afghan women will be legitimized in the eyes of the international community. Gender apartheid recognition could also compel states to act to protect asylum seekers and support human rights organizations in Afghanistan. By giving the institutionalized oppression of Afghan women a name and a legal basis under which to act, states will likely have a stronger reaction to the gender apartheid in Afghanistan.