What Did Taliban do with WOMEN? *Warning REAL FOOTAGE — Transcript

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1. 0:00When the Taliban first appeared, many Afghan  women thought the chaos of war was finally ending.
2. 0:05What they didn't know was that a very different  kind of nightmare was just beginning. And nothing
3. 0:10they had lived through could have prepared  them for the way the Taliban treated them.
4. 0:19In 1977, before the Taliban, Afghanistan  looked very different. In the capital, Kabul,
5. 0:26women worked as judges, members of parliament,  doctors, teachers, and government officials.
6. 0:30They walked around the city in regular clothes,  attended university, studied law and medicine,
7. 0:35and built successful careers.  This wasn't rare or unusual.
8. 0:40One of them was Dr. Anahita Ratebzad.  She was elected to parliament in 1965
9. 0:45and became one of Afghanistan's best-known female  politicians. She was also a physician who strongly
10. 0:50supported women's education and equal rights. But  she wasn't the only one. By the 1970s, Afghanistan
11. 0:56had a growing class of educated women who had  slowly earned an important place in public life.
12. 1:02Life was very different outside the cities. In  many rural areas, conservative tribal traditions
13. 1:08meant most women stayed at home, married at a  young age, and never received a formal education.
14. 1:14Even so, the country's official  direction was changing.
15. 1:17Afghanistan's 1964 Constitution gave women  the right to vote, and by the late 1970s,
16. 1:23the communist government in Kabul was  pushing girls' education across the country.
17. 1:27In some villages, these reforms were even  forced on people who strongly opposed them.
18. 1:32Everything changed in 1979 when the Soviet Union  invaded Afghanistan to support the communist
19. 1:37government. The war lasted for ten years. More  than one million Afghans were killed, and around
20. 1:43six million fled the country as refugees. Schools,  courts, government offices, and many other
21. 1:49institutions that had slowly expanded women's  rights were damaged or completely destroyed.
22. 1:58When Soviet forces left Afghanistan  in 1989, the fighting did not end.
23. 2:03Instead, the country fell into another  civil war. Between 1992 and 1996, the
24. 2:09different mujahideen groups that had fought the  Soviets turned their weapons against each other.
25. 2:14Kabul became one of the main battlefields,  and much of the city was destroyed.
26. 2:19For women, these years were already a nightmare.  R*pe was used as a weapon of war. Women were
27. 2:25kidnapped from their homes. In areas controlled  by fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
28. 2:30a powerful warlord who received support from both  the United States and Pakistan at different times,
29. 2:35women who appeared in public without  full covering risked acid attacks.
30. 2:40All of this happened before the Taliban  had taken control of a single major city.
31. 2:45In 1994, a new group of religious students emerged  who promised to end the fighting, restore law and
32. 2:50order, and enforce Islamic law across the country.  After years of violence and chaos, many ordinary
33. 2:57Afghans, including women who were exhausted  by the constant war, initially welcomed them.
34. 3:02The group's leader was Mullah Mohammed  Omar, a former mujahideen fighter
35. 3:07who had lost his right eye during the war against  the Soviets. He rarely appeared in public,
36. 3:12was almost never photographed, and was deeply  committed to his beliefs. In September 1994,
37. 3:18Taliban fighters captured Kandahar  with almost no resistance.
38. 3:22Just two months later, they controlled twelve  of Afghanistan's thirty-four provinces.
39. 3:29They entered Kabul on September 27, 1996. Within  hours, they captured former President Mohammad
40. 3:36Najibullah from the United Nations compound where  he had lived under protection for four years.
41. 3:41He was tortured, castrated, killed, and his  body was hanged from a traffic light in the
42. 3:46middle of the city. It was a brutal warning  of what the new rulers were willing to do.
43. 3:52For women, the warning came through a series  of new laws announced over the following days.
44. 3:57One by one, nearly every  freedom they had disappeared.
45. 4:01Girls older than eight were immediately banned  from going to school. Every girl who had been
46. 4:06sitting in a classroom the day before was suddenly  told she could no longer continue her education.
47. 4:12Women were also fired from government jobs. This  wasn't just an administrative decision. Women made
48. 4:18up about 70% of Kabul's teachers, 50% of its civil  servants, and 40% of its doctors. Removing them
49. 4:25caused the city's education system and healthcare  system to fall into crisis within weeks.
50. 4:31Women were also banned from leaving their  homes unless they were accompanied by a mahram,
51. 4:35a close male guardian such as a husband, father,  brother, or son. There were no exceptions.
52. 4:41This was especially devastating for the estimated  30,000 to 50,000 widows living in Kabul,
53. 4:47many of whom had lost their husbands during  fifteen years of war. Without a male guardian,
54. 4:52they could not work, buy food, visit a  doctor, or even move around the city.
55. 4:58The Taliban also ordered windows facing  the street to be painted black or covered
56. 5:02so women inside the house could not be seen.  Wearing the burqa, a full-body covering with
57. 5:07a small mesh screen over the eyes, became  mandatory whenever women went outside.
58. 5:12Many Afghan women had worn the burqa by choice  for generations, especially in conservative areas.
59. 5:17Under the Taliban, it was no longer a choice.  Anyone who refused could be punished immediately.
60. 5:24These rules were enforced by the Ministry for the  Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,
61. 5:29commonly known as the morality police. Its  officers patrolled the streets carrying batons.
62. 5:36Women were beaten for showing a wrist or an  ankle. They were beaten for laughing too loudly.
63. 5:42Some were even beaten for wearing shoes that made  noise while walking because the Taliban believed
64. 5:46women should not draw any attention to themselves,  even through the sound of their footsteps.
65. 5:52The healthcare system created  another deadly problem.
66. 5:55Women were forbidden from being treated by male  doctors. But many female doctors had already
67. 6:00been forced out of their jobs. As a result,  thousands of women suffering from infections,
68. 6:05pregnancy complications, or other treatable  illnesses had nowhere to go. Some died from
69. 6:10medical problems that could have been treated  in less than an hour at a normal hospital.
70. 6:18By 1998, the effects of Taliban rule could  be measured. That year, Physicians for Human
71. 6:24Rights carried out a major study of women  living in Kabul. The results were shocking.
72. 6:29Ninety-seven percent of the women  surveyed showed signs of major depression,
73. 6:34while 71% met the medical standards for  post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
74. 6:39The United Nations estimated that year  that around 8,000 women in Kabul alone
75. 6:44were suffering from severe psychological trauma.  Years of war had already destroyed the economy,
76. 6:50but removing women from the  workforce made things even worse.
77. 6:53Many families had depended on a wife or  mother's government salary to survive.
78. 6:58Once those jobs disappeared, so did the  income that kept entire households alive.
79. 7:03But within months of the Taliban taking Kabul,  secret schools began appearing across the city.
80. 7:08They were hidden in basements, behind  closed curtains inside private homes,
81. 7:12or disguised as sewing groups and cooking classes.  Women and girls would arrive wearing their burqas
82. 7:17so they wouldn't attract attention. Once the doors  were shut, the books came out, and lessons began.
83. 7:24Even though education had been banned for  girls, children continued learning in secret.
84. 7:29One of the main groups behind these schools was
85. 7:31the Revolutionary Association of the Women  of Afghanistan, better known as RAWA.
86. 7:37The organization had been founded  in 1977 by Meena Keshwar Kamal,
87. 7:41a young women's rights activist who was only 20  years old. She was assassinated in 1987, but the
88. 7:48group continued its work throughout the Taliban  years. RAWA secretly ran classrooms, helped women,
89. 7:53and gathered evidence of Taliban abuses. By 1999,  an estimated 30,000 children, most of them girls,
90. 8:01were being educated through underground schools  in Kabul alone. Any teacher who was caught
91. 8:06could be flogged or sent to prison. Some were  arrested, but many continued teaching anyway.
92. 8:12Women also continued running beauty salons  in secret after the Taliban banned them as
93. 8:16immoral businesses. Families hid written records  of Taliban crimes inside the walls of their homes
94. 8:21so the evidence would not be found. British-Afghan  journalist Saira Shah secretly entered Afghanistan
95. 8:28and filmed life under Taliban rule for the  documentary *Beneath the Veil*, released in 2001.
96. 8:34The film showed public executions, women being  beaten in the streets, and interviews with women
97. 8:40who spoke in whispers because they feared someone  outside might hear them. For many people in the
98. 8:44West, it was the first time they had actually  seen what life under the Taliban looked like.
99. 8:50The international community slowly began  responding. By 1997, the Clinton administration
100. 8:56had publicly condemned the Taliban's treatment  of women. That same year, the Feminist Majority
101. 9:01Foundation, led by Eleanor Smeal, launched a  major campaign that gathered millions of petition
102. 9:06signatures, lobbied American politicians, and  pushed the US government to take stronger action.
103. 9:12In 1999, the United States imposed  economic sanctions on the Taliban.
104. 9:17But sanctions did little to  change life inside Afghanistan.
105. 9:21The first Taliban government did not  fall because of diplomacy or protests.
106. 9:25It ended because of something that  happened on a Tuesday morning in September.
107. 9:31That day, September 11, in 2001, Al-Qaeda carried  out terrorist attacks against the United States.
108. 9:38After the attacks, the Taliban refused to  hand over Osama bin Laden, who was being
109. 9:42sheltered in Afghanistan. That decision quickly  sealed the regime's fate. The United States
110. 9:48launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7,  2001. By November 13, fighters from the Northern
111. 9:54Alliance had entered Kabul. By December, the  Taliban had retreated into their strongholds
112. 10:00in southern and eastern Afghanistan or  escaped across the border into Pakistan.
113. 10:06For Afghan women, life changed almost overnight.  Schools reopened. Women returned to work.
114. 10:12On December 22, 2001, Hamid Karzai  became Afghanistan's interim leader.
115. 10:17Sima Samar, a physician who had spent the Taliban  years secretly running underground schools and
116. 10:21illegal medical clinics, was appointed Deputy  Prime Minister and Minister for Women's Affairs.
117. 10:27The woman who had once hidden textbooks inside her  home was now serving in the country's government.
118. 10:33The Bonn Agreement, signed on December  5, 2001, created the legal foundation
119. 10:38for Afghanistan's new government and specifically  included protections for women's rights.
120. 10:43The new Constitution, adopted in 2004, guaranteed  equal rights for men and women under Afghan law.
121. 10:50By 2005, women held 27% of the seats  in Afghanistan's new parliament,
122. 10:55a larger share than women held  in the US Congress at that time.
123. 10:59The changes continued over the next two  decades. By 2010, about 2.7 million girls
124. 11:05were attending school across Afghanistan,  compared with almost none during Taliban rule.
125. 11:11By 2020, that number had grown to around 3.5  million. Female life expectancy increased from
126. 11:16about 45 years in 2001 to 66 years by 2019. The  number of women dying during childbirth dropped by
127. 11:25more than half over the same period. Women became  judges, police officers, pilots, and mayors.
128. 11:30Shabana Basij-Rasikh, who had secretly attended an  underground school as a child during Taliban rule,
129. 11:36went on to found Afghanistan's first  girls' boarding school, SOLA, in 2008.
130. 11:41She became one of the best-known symbols  of how much the country had changed.
131. 11:49The twenty years between 2001 and 2021 were  not simply a success story that suddenly ended.
132. 11:56During the war, the United States and its allies  spent about $2.26 trillion in Afghanistan.
133. 12:02A large amount of that money disappeared  through corruption, dishonest contracts,
134. 12:06and theft inside the Afghan government. On  paper, the Afghan National Security Forces had
135. 12:11around 300,000 soldiers. But many of those troops  were "ghost soldiers" who did not actually exist.
136. 12:17Corrupt commanders kept collecting their  salaries while pocketing the money themselves.
137. 12:22At the same time, the Taliban quietly built  a parallel government in many rural parts of
138. 12:26Afghanistan. They collected taxes from poppy  farmers, controlled important trade routes,
139. 12:31and operated their own courts. Many villagers,  frustrated by corruption in the official
140. 12:36government, actually preferred using Taliban  courts to settle disputes. The Taliban also
141. 12:41never stopped fighting. Every year, they killed  Afghan soldiers, police officers, and civilians.
142. 12:46They also focused on women who had  become symbols of the country's progress.
143. 12:51Safia Amajan, the head of Kandahar's Department  of Women's Affairs, was assassinated in 2006.
144. 12:58Sitara Achakzai, a provincial council member  and outspoken supporter of women's rights, was
145. 13:03shot outside her home on April 12, 2009. Female  journalists, teachers, judges, police officers,
146. 13:09and other professional women were targeted again  and again. It was a deliberate campaign to scare
147. 13:14women away from public life by showing what  could happen to anyone who stepped forward.
148. 13:19The Afghan government also had serious failures.  The Law on the Elimination of Violence Against
149. 13:24Women, passed in 2009, made child marriage and  domestic violence illegal. But laws meant very
150. 13:30little if they were not enforced. A United  Nations report published in 2016 found that
151. 13:3687% of Afghan women had experienced at least one  form of gender-based violence during their lives.
152. 13:42Outside the cities, many girls were still  forced into marriage. Some were promised to much
153. 13:47older men when they were only six years old in  exchange for bride prices paid to their families.
154. 13:53Even with all these problems, something important  had still been built. A whole generation of girls
155. 13:59grew up without ever living under Taliban rule. To  them, going to school felt normal, not dangerous.
156. 14:05Zarifa Ghafari became mayor of Maidan Shahr  in 2018 when she was just 26 years old.
157. 14:11She survived three assassination  attempts but continued going to work.
158. 14:16That was the Afghanistan  that still existed in 2020.
159. 14:20Then came Doha.
160. 14:24On February 29, 2020, the United States signed  an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar.
161. 14:30The Afghan government was not  included in the negotiations.
162. 14:34Women's rights groups were also  left out. Under the agreement,
163. 14:37the United States promised to withdraw all of  its troops, while the Taliban promised not to
164. 14:42give safe haven to terrorist groups and to take  part in peace talks with the Afghan government.
165. 14:47The Taliban quickly resumed  attacking Afghan government forces,
166. 14:50arguing that their ceasefire only applied  to American troops. Peace talks between the
167. 14:55Taliban and the Afghan government began in Doha  in September 2020 but made almost no progress.
168. 15:01The Taliban gave up very little because  they believed time was on their side.
169. 15:05In April 2021, President Joe Biden confirmed  that all American troops would leave Afghanistan
170. 15:11by September. Everyone understood what that  meant, including US intelligence officials,
171. 15:16Afghan leaders, and the Taliban. Taliban fighters  began capturing districts across the country
172. 15:21during May and June. American intelligence  believed the Afghan government could survive
173. 15:25for six months to two years after the withdrawal.  Instead, Kabul fell on Sunday, August 15, 2021,
174. 15:32less than four months later. President  Ashraf Ghani fled the country by helicopter,
175. 15:37reportedly carrying bags of cash. Within  hours, the Afghan government had collapsed.
176. 15:43In the days before Kabul fell, many women rushed  to erase the lives they had spent twenty years
177. 15:47building. They burned their university degrees,  destroyed photographs showing them at work,
178. 15:53deleted records from their computers and phones,  and painted over beauty salon signs during the
179. 15:58night. Activists desperately called anyone who  might help them escape. Some succeeded. Zarifa
180. 16:05Ghafari left Afghanistan on August 18. Most women  had no connections, no paperwork, and no time.
181. 16:12The scenes at Kabul's airport soon became some  of the most recognizable images of the decade.
182. 16:17Tens of thousands of people crowded around the  gates, hoping to escape before it was too late.
183. 16:22At least seven people died in the crush. Videos  of desperate people falling from American military
184. 16:28aircraft after trying to cling to the outside  spread around the world within hours. Between
185. 16:34August 14 and August 30, the US-led evacuation  airlifted about 123,000 people out of Afghanistan.
186. 16:41But an unknown number of those who needed  to leave the most were left behind.
187. 16:49Two days after taking Kabul, on August 17, 2021,
188. 16:53the Taliban held a press conference.  Their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid,
189. 16:57told journalists from around the  world that the Taliban had changed.
190. 17:01He said women would be allowed to work and study  within the framework of Islamic law. He also
191. 17:06promised there would be no revenge against former  enemies. His words sounded calm and moderate.
192. 17:12It did not last. Within days, women arriving  at government offices were told to go home
193. 17:18and stay there until further  notice. On September 7, 2021,
194. 17:23the Taliban announced their new government. Not  a single woman was given a cabinet position.
195. 17:29The Ministry of Women's Affairs, which had  existed since 2001, was abolished. In its place,
196. 17:35the Taliban brought back the Ministry for the  Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,
197. 17:40the same morality police that had enforced  their strict rules during the 1990s.
198. 17:44On September 17, secondary schools reopened  across most of Afghanistan, but only for boys.
199. 17:51Girls above the sixth grade were told to wait for  another announcement. Families waited for months.
200. 17:57Finally, March 23, 2022, was announced as the day  girls could return to high school. That morning,
201. 18:04thousands of girls and teachers arrived at  their schools only to find the gates locked.
202. 18:09Overnight, Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah  Akhundzada, who rarely appears in public and
203. 18:13rules mainly from Kandahar, had canceled  the reopening. Reports suggested that some
204. 18:19Taliban leaders had supported reopening the  schools, but his decision overruled them all.
205. 18:25Another major blow came on December 20, 2022,  when the Taliban banned women from attending
206. 18:30universities. Thousands of female students  who were already studying for degrees were
207. 18:35suddenly told their education was over.  The order also included another rule.
208. 18:40If women at a university were not  following Taliban requirements,
209. 18:44male students could also be prevented  from attending. The policy was meant
210. 18:48to pressure men and their families into  supporting the restrictions placed on women.
211. 18:52That same month, women were also banned from  working for non-governmental organizations,
212. 18:56or NGOs. This created a huge humanitarian problem.  Aid organizations employed thousands of Afghan
213. 19:03women, and female aid workers were often the only  people allowed to reach women who needed food,
214. 19:08healthcare, and other assistance  because of strict gender segregation.
215. 19:12In April 2023, the Taliban extended the ban to  Afghan women working for the United Nations.
216. 19:18The result was severe disruption to  aid operations at a time when the UN
217. 19:22estimated that 28.3 million Afghans depended  on humanitarian assistance just to survive.
218. 19:29The restrictions continued growing. Women were  once again banned from parks, gyms, and beauty
219. 19:34salons. Female voices slowly disappeared from  radio broadcasts. Some women still protested in
220. 19:40Kabul during August and September 2021 despite the  danger. Many were beaten, arrested, or taken away.
221. 19:48The women who managed to escape Afghanistan  after August 2021 are now spread across Europe,
222. 19:53North America, and the Gulf countries. From  abroad, many continue speaking about what is
223. 19:58happening inside Afghanistan, even though  they can no longer change events directly.