The regime intensifies repression and suffering while failing to address the country\u2019s urgent humanitarian needs<\/p>\n
Two decades ago, photographs of blue burqas became perhaps the totemic image of life under the Taliban, as Afghan women\u2019s rights were invoked and exploited to justify the country\u2019s invasion. On Saturday, the Taliban once more ordered women<\/a> to cover their faces in public. While Afghan women have courageously protested<\/a> against the injunction, the reaction internationally has this time been muted<\/a>. That it follows other punitive restrictions creating what some have called \u201cgender apartheid\u201d \u2013 preventing teenage girls from studying and women from working outside healthcare or education, or travelling outside their home town without a male guardian \u2013 makes it all the more appalling. Ukraine is absorbing the world\u2019s attention. But the muffled response surely also reflects the wish of the US, the UK and others to put the failure of the last 20 years behind them, and the fact that behind the rhetoric, women\u2019s rights remain a low priority.<\/p>\n Though the Taliban justify the burqa as a matter of tradition, this has only been the case in the most conservative rural areas. For many Afghan women, this is a wholly alien and unwelcome<\/a> imposition. Yet, equally, their greatest concern may not be the edict to cover their faces per se, but the fact that this is the latest<\/a> blow removing their ability to work, earn, or be present in the public sphere, and handing control of their bodies to the men in their families. Authorities also suggested that women should not leave their homes if possible, emboldening enforcers on the ground. Women cannot even decide independently what risks they are willing to take, since if their faces are seen in public their male \u201cguardians\u201d face fines, jail time and losing their jobs. (Women who work for the government will also be fired.)<\/p>\n