When the Taliban criminalized the voices and faces of Afghan women in public in August, the global community once again offered nothing more than platitudes in response to the Taliban’s enforcement of gender apartheid.
Adding insult to injury, the United Nations Security Council voted to approve three new travel ban exemptions for sanctioned Taliban leaders shortly after the regime’s most recent assault on women. This included travel to Russia, Uzbekistan, Cameroon, and Turkey. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan recently recognized Taliban diplomats as the country’s representatives – a particularly concerning trend that started with China’s recognition of the Taliban ambassador earlier this year.
The United Nations and other international players regularly undermine their own posture against the Taliban through leniency, loopholes, and lack of sanctions enforcement, as the George W. Bush Institute demonstrated in its recent Captured State series of reports. Not surprisingly, the status quo has invigorated Taliban propaganda, abuse of power, and pursuit of personal gain. No one has paid a greater price than Afghanistan’s women and children. This must change now.
It’s been three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. and international withdrawal. They promised a lot of things – reforms, amnesty, inclusion. None has materialized. The misogynistic and kleptocratic regime has done everything it can to instill fear and obedience among the Afghan population in the past 1,100 days and counting, and its brutality continues to grow. Pressures on the Taliban need to increase, not ease up.
Kowtowing to the regime’s demands and excluding Afghan women and other persecuted members of Afghan civil society from formal dialogues has further undermined vulnerable populations by emboldening the Taliban’s misogynistic cruelty.
Most female Afghans are currently prohibited from working, studying, and moving about freely. Forced and early marriage rates are skyrocketing. Child labor – from which the Taliban profit – is widespread. Most households are food insecure. Children and their mothers lack access to even basic medical care and die needlessly from preventable and treatable ailments. In Jalalabad alone, only one in five children who need hospital level care can access it, according to the BBC.
Protesters, advocates, former military and government officials as well as ethnic and religious minorities are being hunted, not just persecuted. Harassment, detention, torture, sexual assault, femicide, and haunting executions are everyday realities, with new accounts coming to light regularly thanks to courageous truth tellers.
While terrorists, tyrants, and other illiberal actors eagerly enjoy refuge and budding partnerships in the Taliban’s version of Afghanistan, freedom of expression – including music, dancing, and other traditional elements of Afghan culture – has been outlawed. Independent journalism has been suffocated.
The international community has done little to hold the Taliban accountable and protect the rights and well-being of female Afghans from the Taliban’s vicious assault.
Too many Taliban officials freely travel abroad. Of those actually subject to targeted U.N. sanctions and other restrictions, a number – including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister who is also listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List – have secured travel ban exemptions from the United Nations Security Council for both personal needs (like medical care) and official meetings abroad. This includes travel to Russia, China, Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Cameroon, and Switzerland, among others.
Six sanctioned Taliban officials received exemptions in a one-month period alone. Requests for travel ban exemptions are reviewed for approval by all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council including the United States. The United States has traditionally not used its veto power when reviewing.
Statements assuring global unity against the Taliban are regularly undermined by individual actions. Examples abound of countries, organizations, sporting bodies, and companies permitting or pursuing engagement directly at odds with supposed solidarity against recognizing the regime. High level leaders – at both U.N. and national levels – have posed for photos with Taliban officials.
The Organization for Islamic Cooperation increasingly includes Taliban officials in annual gatherings. Global sporting bodies like the International Cricket Council and FIFA have permitted Afghanistan’s men’s team to continue competing in international competitions, while female athletes in Afghanistan and exiled outside of it are prohibited from participating. And a number of nations – including European Union countries– are exploring reopening their embassies in Kabul.
These brazen actions should be called out for what they are: normalization of and complicity in the Taliban’s dehumanization of the Afghan people.
Afghanistan under the Taliban is nothing short of horrific – institutionalized brutality that threatens not just the Afghan people, but peace and prosperity around the world. While the global community’s leverage has changed, it can still do a lot to hold the Taliban accountable.
It starts with expanding targeted sanctions at both U.N. and national levels to include Taliban officials most closely associated with corruption, kleptocracy, and the daily widespread abuses and atrocities occurring in Afghanistan.
Gender apartheid should be codified as a crime against humanity under international law and national legal frameworks. Afghan women both inside and outside of the country are not only pleading for this to happen, they’re leading the charge in solidarity and partnership with their Iranian sisters.
Enablers should be made to answer for actions that reinforce human suffering and defy the global position on nonrecognition. Additionally, the United States should designate entities in Afghanistan that the Taliban use for corruption and illicit activities as a Primary Money Laundering Concern under the USA Patriot Act, a move which would increase the risk to companies that pursue business ties with the Taliban.
National governments, international organizations, and corporate and philanthropic entities should do everything they can to support the bravery and tenacity of women-led organizations in Afghanistan working tirelessly to counter Taliban efforts to erase Afghan women’s existence.
Lastly, global leaders must remember that the Taliban don’t want Afghanistan to succeed. As they have demonstrated time and again over the last 36 months, they instead want to promote their ideology, pursue power, and enhance their personal wealth.
The global community’s failure to enforce and expand existing pressures on the Taliban and those who enable their cruelty has in many ways made the situation markedly worse.
If the world truly aims to support the Afghan people, it’s time to stop enabling their abusers.