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Over the last weeks, women’s place in Afghanistan has devolved into a full blown humanitarian crisis under Taliban rule. Although the Taliban initially stated it would “respect women’s rights,” its policies have already repealed the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, barred women and girls from receiving schooling past the sixth grade, and made it impossible for women to go to work without a male family member to chaperone them.
Unfortunately, the question lingering on the world’s mind is not “will the situation worsen?” but “just how much worse will it get?” Zayba, a 12th grade female Afghan student with aspirations of becoming a surgeon, told The New York Times, “The day the Taliban took control I was thinking: this is the end of life for women.” Two decades of incremental progress for women, bolstered by U.S. aid, is in jeopardy.
Though Biden assured the world that the United States will “continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability” and “speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls,” he has yet to release a plan to protect Afghan women.
But not all hope is lost for the women under Taliban rule. One solution to this problem may lie in the financial sector. While the U.S. occupied Afghanistan, much of the Afghan government’s reserve was moved to American banks. Upon evacuating Afghanistan, the U.S. froze the Taliban’s access to these funds as a form of protest and as collateral to incentivize the Taliban to allow U.S. citizens to evacuate the nation safely. But despite the fact that most Americans in Afghanistan are now home free, the U.S. has not yet released these funds.
The Taliban has made it clear that it is seeking more leverage in international politics, but that leverage will not be easy for them to get. The leverage a country has when it comes to international political negotiation is largely determined by a nation’s wealth. This is bad news for the Taliban, which is governing a small economy, and just ousted half their population from the workforce. Furthermore, they recently lost billions in foreign aid that they were receiving. If the Biden administration really is intent on aiding Afghan women, it should leverage its international standing and financial resources to push the Taliban to reinstitute the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and repeal its restrictions on women’s education and careers.
Furthermore, the Biden administration should release a plan to expand asylum immigration appeals for Afghan women. There is bipartisan support for this issue with prominent politicians on both sides of the aisle, including former Presidents George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, advocating for easing the restrictions on immigration to allow those fleeing Taliban rule easier passage.
With swift action backed by support from both sides of American politics, we can surely look to a brighter future for women in Afghanistan.
