The Taliban have imposed 127 restrictions on women since returning to power in Afghanistan in 2021, according to a running tally by the United States Institute of Peace. Public stoning of women is allowed. Their voices may not be heard in public.
That hard-line approach to governing may be getting harder to maintain. New overtures from neighboring countries offer the Taliban a potential break from international isolation (no country has recognized the group’s government). But in a region learning to embrace equality for women, engagement has conditions.
Earlier Thursday, Taliban representatives met with Qatari officials in Doha seeking more opportunities for Afghan migrant workers. The meeting was co-chaired by Sheikha Najwa bint Abdulrahman Al Thani. As the host country’s deputy minister of labor, she has been a strong advocate of empowering women in the workforce.
India signaled an even bigger opening when its foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, met with his Taliban counterpart in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last week in the highest-level talks between the two sides in three years. For India, Afghanistan represents potential trade and security benefits as it competes with China for regional dominance and seeks to isolate Pakistan.
But in a sign of the potential risks for India in legitimizing the Taliban, the talks included softer issues such as cricket, visas for health care and education, and humanitarian aid for Afghan refugees.
“Some engagement with the international community might pressurise the government to improve its behaviour,” Jayant Prasad, former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, told the BBC. The Taliban “know that will only happen after internal reforms” such as restoring rights to education and careers for women and girls.
The most important shift, however, may be coming from within the Taliban themselves. Amid worsening economic conditions, rifts are widening between the old guard and a younger generation. In one sign that the group sees a need to accommodate more voices, it issued a directive Thursday that no official could hold more than one government job at a time.
The Taliban are “feeling the pressure from the Afghan people, who are asking for services and jobs amid a collapsing economy and limited international assistance,” wrote Lakshmi Venugopal Menon, then a doctoral student at Qatar University, in Al Jazeera last September. Yet atttempts by moderates to “seek engagement, more aid and investment are being undermined by [hard-liners] doubling down on policies like education bans on girls and women.”
A report released Thursday offered a rare insight into efforts by Afghan women to persist in seeking equality amid such harsh measures. “Women-led organizations [have] found new platforms for communication and outreach … to actively participate in advocacy, establishing themselves as credible sources of support for women and girls,” stated the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, a Kabul-based organization.
They are being heard. The regional shifts opening a path for the Taliban out of isolation include a recognition that equality is an essential condition of shared security and economic prosperity. As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has noted, “We cannot achieve success if 50 per cent of our population being women are locked at home.”
