At Pro-Taliban Protest, a Symbol of America’s Lost Influence: Faces Obscured by
Hundreds of women, many wearing full-length robes, their faces obscured by black veils, filled the auditorium of a Kabul university on Saturday holding signs — many of them in English — in support of the Taliban and its strict interpretation of Islam, including separate education for men and women.
The Taliban said the demonstration at Shaheed Rabbani Education University, which followed anti-Taliban protests last week by Afghan women demanding equal rights, was organized by female university lecturers and students.
Reporters on the street near Saturday’s march were kept away from the protesters by Taliban fighters armed with automatic rifles and were not allowed to speak with any of the women. Later attempts to reach the participants through social media or the university went unanswered.
The demonstration, held on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, served as a stark reminder of how despite two decades and more than $780 million spent promoting women’s rights, after the departure of American forces last month, the women of Afghanistan could be thrown back decades, if not centuries.
When the Taliban governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it barred women and girls from holding most jobs and going to school, and practically made them prisoners in their own homes. In public, women were forced to wear the burqa, a tentlike garment that covers them from head to toe, with a crocheted mesh grill over the eyes. Its use to erase the appearance of women from public life was seen in the West as a symbol of Taliban oppression.
The demonstration ofwomen wearing head-to-toe garments and face coverings on the 9/11 anniversary was a sharp rebuke to the United States and its allies, which long cited women’s rights as a reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan long after the Taliban was toppled, Al Qaeda was defanged and Osama bin Laden was assassinated.
Many of the women appeared to be wearing a form of dress familiar to conservative Muslims in Southern Afghanistan, including a veil, while others wore the more traditional blue burqa.
Since the United States and its allies departed Kabul on Aug. 30, leaving Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban, the country’s women have been at the forefront of protests demanding that their rights continue to be respected.
Taliban leaders have responded to those protests with violence, beating participants, including women, and insisting that anyone taking to the streets for a public demonstration must first be granted approval from their caretaker government.
The Ministry of Education of the acting Taliban government said that the women at Saturday’s pro-Islamist demonstration had asked for and received their permission to hold the event.
“Unlike other demonstrations in Kabul, this is the second all-women protest which was nonviolent and the journalists were allowed to cover the protest freely,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The women also welcomed the scheme of separate classes for boys and girls in all universities and institutes and pledged that they would be working for strengthening the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan,” the ministry said.
At Pro-Taliban Protest, a Symbol of America’s Lost Influence: Faces Obscured by