Taliban Debuts List of Its Women’s Rights ‘Achievements’

The Taliban jihadist organization governing Afghanistan applauded itself on Monday for its “achievements” in women’s rights, claiming to prevent child marriages and punish domestic abusers.

The Taliban is a repressive jihadist terror organization that seized control of the country in 2021, following outgoing President Joe Biden’s decision to violate an agreement brokered by President-elect Donald Trump that would have seen an orderly exit of American forces from the country.

During its three years in power, the Taliban has implemented expansive policies to repress Afghan women, including mandating they cover their faces, not leave their homes whenever possible, and not speak at a volume that other women can hear them.

Women have also, naturally, been effectively banned from having jobs or lives of their own and women and older girls have been banned from obtaining an education.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan in a similar way for much of the 1990s. Despite its clear history as a human rights criminal entity, Taliban terrorists claimed in August 2021, upon their return to power, that they would honor the rights of women. Top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told journalists at his first press conference following the collapse of the legitimate government of Afghanistan that the Taliban would respect women’s rights “within the framework of sharia,” or Islamic law, then went on to tell women “to stay home at the moment.”

Mujahid published a list of alleged women’s rights “achievements” on Monday to mark the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women,” a U.N.-recognized awareness effort. He credited the Taliban’s social repressive apparatus, the “Ministry of Propagation of Virtue, Prevention of Vice and Hearing Complaints,” for the alleged successes.

On the list of “successes” were alleged attempts to prevent child marriages and punish domestic abuse.

“In the past three years … around 20,000 (twenty thousand) women have been provided with inheritance, Mhar (dowry), and other fundamental rights, which were previously taken from them due to harmful customs, traditions, and baseless notions of honor or zeal in society,” Mujahid claimed. “Only, in the last six months, 1,000 (one thousand) similar cases have been registered and resolved.”

Mujahid also alleged that the Taliban had “prevented 5,000 marriages where women were forced marriage either under duress, in exchange for money, or against their will, and where underage girls were being married off to old men.”

Evidence has surfaced in the past year calling into question the claim that the Taliban is attempting to prevent child marriages. In October, the BBC published an exposé revealing that the Taliban has, contrary to its claims, undone marriage annulments taking place under the prior government, essentially forcing former child brides back into marriages with the predators who forced them into marriages as children.

A Taliban terrorist, confronted with questions about the specific marriages the BBC unearthed, claimed that the annulments in question were “against the sharia” and declared, “Women aren’t qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence.”

Mujahid completed his list of alleged women’s rights “achievements” by claiming the Taliban stands against domestic violence.

“Domestic violence against women, such as belittling them, physical and mental violence, depriving them of their islamic rights, and treating them with disrespect based on harmful customs, has been prevented,” Mujahid claimed, presenting no evidence for the alleged would-be cases of abuse that the terrorists “prevented.”

In addition to his proclamation, Mujahid discussed the topic of the Taliban’s rampant abuse against women with the Afghan outlet Tolo News. The spokesman conceded that the Taliban fell far from the international standards of basic respect for the human rights of women but nonetheless defended his terrorist organization.

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“We are trying our best overall, but it is not enough,” Mujahid claimed. “More efforts are needed, especially to address challenges in remote and rural areas where intervention is essential.”

On the same day that Mujahid boasted of his group’s alleged respect for women’s rights, the Taliban “Ministry of Information and Culture” announced the establishment of a new regime office, the “General Directorate for the Preservation of Jihadi Values.” According to the Taliban’s Bakhtar News Agency, the new directorate is in charge of “audiovisual documentation, the establishment of a Jihadi Museum, and the compilation of authentic historical records.”

“Jihadi values” categorically do not include respect for the rights of women, as documented by the Taliban’s own policies. Taliban terrorists have repeatedly insisted that women existing in public is haram, or forbidden, and more recently began insisting that women’s voices should also not be heard in public.

“It is very bad to see women in some areas, and our scholars also agree that women’s faces should be hidden,” Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif, a spokesman for the Ministry of Vice and Virtue, told the Associated Press in August 2023. “A woman has her own value and that value decreases by men looking at her. Allah gives respect to females in hijab and there is value in this.”

In October, the Vice and Virtue “minister” Mohammad Khalid Hanafi issued an edict banning women from using their voices while praying at a volume that could “be heard by other women.”

“In a public gathering in Logar province, Hanafi stressed the unity among citizens of the country,” Tolo News reported at the time, “adding that a woman’s loud voice in mixed-gender gatherings is considered inappropriate.”

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