As I see itAmid war in Ukraine, Asia must remind the Taliban it can’t ride roughshod over women’s rights

Women’s rights have continued to backslide in Afghanistan, despite what the Taliban and its supporters such as Abdul Hadi Awang of Malaysia’s PAS say

With the world distracted by war in Ukraine, Asia needs to stay alert to the crises nearer home – and remind the Taliban of promises it made to uphold rights

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Afghan girls attend a lesson in a makeshift classroom at their primary school in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, in the brief window that the Taliban allowed it to open. Photo: EPA

Published: 9:30am, 25 Mar 2022

When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan following the United States’ military pull-out from the country, there were some voices here in Asia who amplified the group’s claims that they had changed for the better.

Leaders from the likes of Malaysia’s hardline Islamist political party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), eagerly parroted the Taliban’s publicity blitz that the country would not return to the same state it was in when the group was last in power in the 1990s. Then, women were confined to their homes, public executions were commonplace and television and music was banned.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s long-time spokesman, promised to uphold women’s rights within the norms of Islamic law.

Abdul Hadi Awang, president of PAS, declared to Malaysians last August that the Taliban had changed. Photo: AFP

I remember being deeply cynical then and was shocked when the influential PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang declared to Malaysians last August that the Taliban had changed, and that anyone saying otherwise had somehow been duped by the Western media. Alas, we now know that when it comes to a group like the Taliban, so fastidious in wanting to preserve the mores of the Middle Ages, change is outside the realm of possibility.

On Wednesday, the Taliban administration offered the clearest sign of this: hours after girls’ high schools had opened their doors for the first time in seven months, they were swiftly shut again.

The so-called Education Ministry said it was having second thoughts on the reopening, and that schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture.