Women and Girls Bear Brunt of Biden’s Afghanistan Failure

Two and a half years after the disastrous U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, Afghan women and girls have been subjected to horrific oppression and abuse – and yet are still playing a crucial role in opposing the Taliban regime.

During the first week of January, news reports surfaced that the Taliban had arrested a large number of women and girls in Kabul and the Paktika and Daykundi provinces for allegedly violating the dress code by wearing a “bad hijab.”

Unfortunately, arrests of women under the pretense of improper headwear are just the latest example of the Taliban’s repression.

Shortly after the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban outlawed education for girls beyond the sixth grade and then decreed that women must be covered from head to toe when they are not in their homes. In 2021, the Taliban also ordered that at least one male guardian must accompany a woman if she travels more than 45 miles from her home, while some localities impose even more strict policies. In some cases, women who have broken these laws have been denied access to medical facilities along with facing imprisonment and even torture.

Other accounts have emerged of women being exiled from their workplaces and forced into marriages. Rapes are now commonplace, while so-called “honor killings” have been on the rise.

A new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reveals in shocking detail the full brutality of the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls. Quoting the evaluation of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the SIGAR report says that 8.7 percent of girls under the age of 18 and 9 percent of girls under 15 are married. “The rates of child and forced marriage are increasing in response to economic duress,” the report reads. It also adds that more than half of Afghans polled last year said “child marriage” was the primary threat to Afghan girls.

A United Nations report published last December also found that Afghan women and girls are excluded from most areas of daily and public life. “UNAMA continues to document instances of extrajudicial killing, torture and ill-treatment, corporal punishment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and other violations of detainees’ rights,” the report reads.

While the Taliban government is ultimately responsible for the horrors now befalling Afghan women, it should not be forgotten that Biden’s calamitous withdrawal paved the way for the Taliban’s return to power.

At the time of the U.S. exit, Biden promised that the U.S. would “continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls.” By now it is clear that this empty promise can be added to the long list of Biden’s foreign policy failures.

However, despite being abandoned by Biden and subjected to horrific treatment, Afghan women are fighting back against the Taliban – literally.

Afghan opposition groups, most prominently the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), have consistently targeted Taliban military installations. Importantly, NRF resistance has helped neutralize the threat from weaponry abandoned by the United States amid Biden’s hasty withdrawal.

One recent successful resistance action occurred in Charikar, about 43 miles from the Afghan capital. The city is a gateway to the Panjshir Valley, a mountainous region that is notoriously difficult to conquer. The Soviet Union broke its teeth there 50 years ago, and the Taliban have likewise been unable to bring it under their control. The Panjshir Valley is also home to the Tajik, an ethnic subgroup that represents 39 percent of the Afghan population and is known for being strong fighters.

On the night of December 22, resistance groups successfully destroyed a number of buildings that were part of the Taliban’s regional headquarters in Charikar, burning them to the ground. Just a few small resistance commando units left Taliban forces in disarray. The Taliban also reportedly lost a large number of weapons in the fires.

Among the resistance fighters were five female snipers and a female intelligence unit. One NRF official speaking from Kabul, who identified himself only as Wali, told me, “Girls cut off the evacuation road for the Taliban” during the assault.

In December alone, at least 36 Taliban leaders were gravely injured or killed by resistance fighters, including a top intelligence officer. “These girls who have created hell for the Taliban are brave Tajik,” retired Pakistani intelligence officer Colonel Kashif Sherazi told me. “The Taliban are taking revenge on their people now.”

Sherazi added that the Taliban suffer significant losses nearly every day due to clashes on the Tajik’s land where the fight continues. But the moral strength of the Valley radiates over the whole of Afghanistan.

“Educated and courageous Tajik women who did not take up arms have been at the forefront of all uprisings, protests, and other forms of resistance against the Taliban’s immoral rule in Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, or Jalalabad,” Sherazi said. “They are far from being a nation of victims or cowards; the Taliban know that their mothers helped to defeat the Soviets.”

It is perhaps no surprise then that the Taliban have been particularly determined to subjugate the country’s female population. But the more brutal the oppression, the fiercer the resistance becomes.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.