Amid the efforts to talk to the Taliban in Afghanistan, concern is frequently expressed about the fate of Afghan women if the militants were to gain a role in running that country. But the real question is what progress has been made on women's rights since the fall of the Taliban. During the five years the Taliban reigned over Afghanistan from 1996, women were subjected to atrocities and repression of the kind the world thought had ended with the medieval ages. When they were ousted in 2001, much was made of the promise the moment held for Afghan women for the first time since the 1980s, when the country descended into war. But more than a decade later, and under the west-backed Hamid Karzai goverrnment, the ground situation has shown little improvement. The recent rescue of a 15-year-old girl held captive for months in a toilet by her in-laws who had broken her fingers, pulled out her finger nails, and tortured her for resisting their attempts to prostitute her is a chilling reality check on all the upbeat buzz about Afghan women participating in public life, being recruited in the armed forces, holding fashion shows, and attending pop music concerts. The brutal truth is that for a majority of women in Afghanistan, cultural norms of ‘honour' and ‘shame' and customary practices of using women to settle disputes, combined with the general lawlessness spawned by the prolonged conflict, have ensured a life of deep insecurity.
In 2009, the Karzai government enacted legislation called the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW). This law, which identifies 22 kinds of violence against women and clearly states the duties and obligations of the Afghan police and government in implementing it, was claimed to be a game-changer. However, a recent report by the United Nations found that EVAW was applied to only 594 out of 2,299 complaints of violence against women registered by the Afghanistan human rights commission from March 2010 to March 2011. Out of those, indictments were filed only in 151 cases, while primary courts used EVAW to arrive at judgments in just about 100 cases. Most complaints were processed by family or village elders, often resulting in their withdrawal. The report said women were also discouraged from registering complaints, so the numbers do not reflect the correct picture. The last time Afghan women truly enjoyed a measure of equality with men was in the 1960s and 1970s. Given the dismal uncertainties of present-day Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that its women can even regain those limited freedoms any time in the near future, let alone lead 21st century lives.
