A United Nations Children’s Fund official said on Tuesday that he was “optimistic” about Afghanistan‘s future after Taliban leaders claimed they would support girls’ education.
Mustapha Ben Messaoud, UNICEF’s chief of field operations in the region, said he visited with Taliban representatives who told him they plan to leave schools “up and running.”
“We have ongoing discussions. We are quite optimistic based on those discussions,” he said. “We have not a single issue with the Taliban in those field offices.”
Since taking over Kabul this weekend, the Taliban has claimed it plans to set up a more “inclusive” regime, but only within the confines of Islamic law, which requires women to wear burqas, forces them to marry, and forbids them from obtaining an education or working a job.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan doesn’t want the women to be the victims anymore,” Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Talibaln’s “cultural commission,” said. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is ready to provide women with environment to work and study, and the presence of women in different [government] structures according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values.”
Afghani women, however, have reported horror stories about how the Taliban has treated women.
One Kabul female wrote that as she was heading to a university in the city for class, a group of women ran out of the building and warned her to leave because the Taliban had arrived and would beat any woman who was not wearing a burqa.
“Meanwhile, the men standing around were making fun of girls and women, laughing at our terror. ‘Go and put on your chadari [burqa],’ one called out. ‘It is your last days of being out on the streets,’ said another. ‘I will marry four of you in one day,’ said a third,” the woman recalled.
Another woman, Zarifa Ghafari, who made history in 2018 by becoming the first female mayor in Afghanistan, said she is sitting at home and waiting for Taliban terrorists to come for her.
“I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family. I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me. I can’t leave my family. And anyway, where would I go?” she said on Sunday.
Under the Taliban’s previous rule of Afghanistan, women were forced to stay in their homes and if they left they had to be escored by a male relative. Women accused of crimes had limbs amputated or were publicly executed. Many of the women who remain in Kabul said they expect the Taliban’s terrorist regime to be just as brutal as it was before.
“We don’t know what to do, we don’t know if we still have jobs,” one Afghani woman said. “It feels like our life and our future has ended.”
