M.R.Lalu
Everything under the Sun is bound to change with the course of time and we frequently experience it. With time’s eternal might and consistent flow comes the change and nothing including the extraterrestrial beings can escape this metamorphosis. But the lone livable planet to human knowledge seems to face a setback as many things that apply to his conscience seem to be derailing so drastically. For instance, New Year 2025 has had a feverish welcome all over the world. Its pomp and gaiety still reverberates but tremors of catastrophes keep engulfing people’s lives without any identifiable distinction in the quality of life being experienced from the previous year. Suffering and predicaments unsympathetically crush people’s aspirations and their dreams are frequently haunted by the effects of human insensitivity and horror. Wars, invasions, drug abuse, child trafficking and atrocities on women and children, nothing changed. The popular impact of time could not change the rampant concentration of horror in human minds. Though unpredictability prevails, the New Year brought a glimmer of hope between Israel and Hamas. The peace truce between the warring regimes could bring smiles on people’s faces. Bewildered hostages would take unsteady steps to their homes while the dead would scream from their entombments. Whatever might be the outcome of the peace deal, neither its resounding impact nor the New Year’s political sensationalism would bring the dead back. Both war and truce revolve around the overarching goal of pre-eminence that political regimes dictate and achieve.
What continued to smash my inner possibility as a compassionate human being in this New Year was the hard-heartedness by the Taliban regime on its women population in Afghanistan. Women persecution under Taliban multiplied in every field of life threateningly opening the most devastating chapters of horror. And the world, as usual, remained mute to what can be called the most ruthless and systematic oppression of women and girls. The Taliban rose to power in 1990 and their calamitous resurgence in 2021 became the most horrendous. The country being deeply rooted in Sharia, the global community watched an extreme interpretation of the Islamic law controlling Afghanistan’s population, especially its women. Enforced through fear and violence, the Taliban resorted to public punishments when it sensed that its radical law enforcement was violated. Its tyrannical interventions successfully managed to consolidate its power against half of its population. The heartbreaking impact of its implementation of the Sharia-laws made the country the darkest landscape of unfathomable horror. The first of such systemic denial of freedom began with a ban on girls from attending schools. This effectively erased the female presence from educational institutions. Its resurgence in 2021 witnessed the outfit resume the same policy putting millions of the country’s girls being shut behind the veils of its nonnegotiable religiosity. Their reappearance further forced the women to stay away from the teaching-learning process altogether.
Societies across the globe began to flourish both socially and economically ever since they recognized the importance of the female contribution for the collective progress of communities. Countries and societies, where dominance of men remained solid, without an essential advancement of women in their social affairs, growth of their populace continued to be a meager chance. By banning its women from education and learning processes, the Taliban is literally pushing multiple generations into a perilous situation. Forcing the country’s women population to remain totally dependent on men, keeping them in seclusion and societal isolation, the country is all set to nullify its people’s right to utilize its available resources and channelize growth. Women, being stripped of their rights, have been registering their discomfort and disrespect for the Taliban decrees. But their momentum, at present, has not grown to the level of a movement which Islamic republic of Iran witnessed recently after the death of Masha Amini. Saudi Arabia’s progressive shift in the direction of awarding more freedom to women came as a valid reason for the rest of the Islamic world to take an inclusive and transformative approach. Understandably, by forcing its female population to stay away from public appearance, the Taliban means to put them in the harsh climate of oppression, depression and exacerbated feelings of mental torture and social hazards. Their protests in small and large groups have so far been crushed and the country as per reports has become an open prison where breathing became difficult.
The Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has recently prohibited women from performing certain Islamic expressions of faith including their reciting the Quran aloud. As per the Taliban decree, women in the country are banned from reciting the verses of the Quran in the presence of other women as well. More restrictive and rigid, the Islamic law enacted by the Taliban portrays a woman’s voice to be strictly concealed as her voice should not be heard in public; even if she exercises her right to make her voice audible at her home, the Taliban rule holds her liable for strict punishment. Literally the Afghan women, today, are kept for sex and breeding and they have fully been dumped in the kitchen to be used as mere instruments and forced to shrink and shrivel. The latest decree from the Taliban was the most embarrassing. With an alarming measure of insensitivity it blocked the last ray of hope touching the lives of women. As per its latest edict, new buildings will have no windows from which the courtyards, kitchen and other areas of the neighborhood would be visible. Windows were the only openings that the women in the country could view the world outside. Societies across the globe seem to have taken an understandable shift in their outlook as their immensity of silence is being decoded as a sign of approval of the ruthlessness. The miseries of women have been aggravated with little being done by the international community. While governments, global influencers and international diplomatic channels are aware of this grave threatening scenario, a carefully calibrated diplomatic move to curb the Taliban’s inhuman institutionalization of human torture is yet to evolve. India’s strategic stance through its vaccine diplomacy and other resource sharing initiatives with the terror infested country has increased its credibility as a powerful player.
Afghanistan under the Taliban is a disaster and a grave humanitarian crisis. From fully restricting women gaining access to education while strictly banning their free movement to the grave threat of sealing their life behind the walls, the horror by the outfit principally aims to erase women’s presence from public places. What the Taliban symbolizes through its egregious human rights violations is an open challenge to the world outside, that its implementation of the Islamic law is unquestionable and its interpretation could not be easily diluted. Afghan women’s struggle for existence is a disruptive reminder. There is a significant population with the same Taliban mindset lurking in nations that progress with constitutional efficacy and strong democratic framework, purposefully waiting to erupt into chaos and inhuman atrocities. Such forces gaining upper hand in democratic environment would be fatal. From stone pelting in Kashmir to the beheading of a tailor to the unrest in Bangladesh, we can sense this mindset calculatedly threatening peace loving people across the globe while India’s complex social equations exacerbate the threat.
—M.R.Lalu
(Author and Freelance Journalist)