The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ruled Afghanistan before the Taliban.

The central
government of Afghanistan started to become weaker after the Soviet forces withdrew from
the country in 1989. By taking advantage of this weakness, the Taliban started to govern the
country and large parts of Afghanistan, and Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, heart and other Dari-
speaking urban centres were under their control between 1996 and 2001.
Taliban is an Islamic extremist political group. They dominated Afghanistan with the rules
that brought many restrictions especially for women and young girls.
The life of the Afghan society was changed and the concept of freedom was destroyed with
the Taliban regime. This regime suppressed women who were subjected to various types of
violence. Many regulations which directly negative influenced women were introduced by
the Taliban. First of all, they made changes in the Afghan society’s perspective on women.
According to them, there were only two places for women: one is her husband’s bed, the
other is the graveyard (Skaine, 2002, p: 64). Due to this perspective, women, regardless of
the fact that they were educated or were from the middle class, were forced to get married
to Taliban. Moreover, the number of raping to women started to rise. In some cases, Taliban
raped women who were married to another Taliban and more than one man raped women.
They endeavoured to make women’s lives harder. Women were not allowed to leave their
homes and go out unless they covered all their body from head to ankle with the burqa.
Vicki Mabrey reported on CBS’S 60 Minutes II that, “the veil, the burqa has been the symbol
of Taliban’s power for the Afghan women (Ayotte and Husain, 2005, p: 116). If the ankles of
women could be seen, that is, if they were not covered by the veil, they were beaten in the
streets in front of everyone by the Taliban. This wasn’t the sole reason for beating the
Afghan women, there were other reasons too. For example, women were beaten with a
whip or were incarcerated unless they obeyed the rules. The Taliban ended the lives of a lot
of women. Another restriction for women was that they were not allowed to go anywhere if
they did not have one of their male relatives, e.g. their husbands or brothers with them.
Afghan women were like in a huge prison because of Taliban; they were not given any value.
To put it more clearly, the Taliban locked the Afghan women to their houses but event at
their home, women did not feel comfortable because all the windows were painted black by
Taliban’s order which again meant restriction for women.
Haron Amin thought that the Afghan women were living dead: they existed and breathed
but they had lives of agony because of the tortures they were subject to (Skaine, 2002, p:
64). In addition, the Afghan women were absolutely the victims of physical violence at the
hands of the Taliban, and, the call from feminist international relations scholars must be
taken seriously to investigate "the ways in which governments and the military use, and
alter, prevailing discourses about gender to their own ends”. (Ayotte and Husain, 2005, p:
121)

Taliban made quite a few decisions in the ruling of the country, one of which was to ban the
education for girls and women as well. June 16, 1998 was the date when the Taliban regime
demanded more than 100 private schools be closed. Despite this, they gave permission to
the non-governmental organisations to open schools. These schools, however, were not
allowed to educate girls above eight years old on courses other than Koran. Both boys and
girls were influenced by the ban of education since their books were ignored in Herat.
According to the UNICEF reports released in January 2000, ninety percent of the girls and
seventy five percent of the boys were not able to attend schools in the areas where Taliban
had the control (Skaine, 2002, p: 65). Nancy Hatch Dupree says that all of the restrictive
regulations that women are subject to are about education and employment. According to
the UN survey released in 1996, there were 158 government schools in Kabul, 148233 male
students and 103256 female students and 11,208 teachers, 7,793 of which were women.
UNICEF data revealed that 10% of the girl population attended non-governmental (NGO)
schools such as Mosque or home schools (Skaine, 2002, p: 65). The proportion of the girl
population in Kandahar who enrolled schools was only 5 per cent in 1995. Due to this fact,
the ratio of the illiterate women and young girls steadily increased during the Taliban
regime. One of the highest adult illiteracy rates in the world was in Afghanistan in 2000 and
as BBC World News stated, all the generation under the Taliban regime grew up without
being educated. Moreover, various reasons hindered women and young girls from
completing their education. One of these reasons was that some of the young girls were not
able to go to school since the bus transportation was only for men and boys.

Women could have jobs before the Taliban regime took control of the country. Some even
could have two different jobs at the same time, but, the Taliban regime prohibited women
to work. Once working as teachers, nurses and doctors, women were now moving in the
streets in their burqas from head to toe like ghosts and trying to sell every property or
begging in order to nurture their children (Skaine, 2002, p:69). The restriction on the
employment affected both children and widowed Afghan women. The Taliban law made it
possible only for men to work and earn money. There occurred another problem for women,
in particular for widows, because of this unjust situation. This was because the Taliban
regime banned women, even if they were widowed, to leave their homes and earn money,
which obviously caused women to be unable to buy food and nurture their children. For this
very reason, women, especially widowed ones, started leaving their homes to beg for
money. There was yet another problem; since the Taliban head banned women from leaving
their homes without male relatives, and since they were not allowed to earn money, these
women were punished severely and were left to die in their homes by the regime.

The desperateness of the Afghan women to continue their lives and to look after their
children forced them into prostitution. The reason underlying women’s taking up
prostitution as employment was merely economic. Some of the prostitutes in Kabul lived in
brothels and they were obliged to share their earnings with the madam and the resident
pimp (Skaine, 2002, p:69). According to Taliban’s claims, communists and lechers had
penetrated into the Taliban ranks (Skaine, 2002, p:69). It was during this period that women
trafficking and prostitution among refugees increased excessively. This rise was due to the
legislation that was put into force by the Taliban that banned women from working and
attending schools. What is more, this oppressive government caused an increase in the
poverty rates. Moreover, a lot of women fled to Pakistan to take shelter to escape from the
Taliban. A proportion of these women lost their male partners.
Increasing poverty and women trafficking and prostitution influenced particularly young girls
and widows. A refugee from Afghanistan, Frayba Wakili, told at the Feminist Expo 2000
international conference that ''The Taliban abused and used our religion to oppress women;
I cannot hold a job or go to school and so would be forced to beg for food like thousands of
others'' (Skaine, 2002, p:70). The only job women could do under the Taliban regime was
prostitution.
Afghan women were forced to oppression and cruelty under the Taliban control. Hence,
women started experiencing psychological difficulties. Depressed Afghan women filled the
mental hospitals. In fact, many afghan women regarded these places as isolation from the
Taliban regime. 160 Afghan women were studied by 1998 doctors for human rights. The
survey revealed that the ratio of poor health and multiple specific symptoms were very high,
and since the Taliban’s ruling started, the physical condition of women had decreased by
71%.

The proportion of people who had only little access to health services was more than 70 %
while the proportion of those who had no access was 20%. What is more, those who had
serious illnesses constituted more than 50 percent of people and doctors did not have the
opportunity to search for medical care for these people. Women were frightened to seek
medical care as they could be arrested or face public beating by the Taliban. The poverty
rate and various reasons hindered many women to buy burqas which, in turn, prevented
them from applying to hospitals for medical help. Women implored to the PHR researcher to
send burqas from the United States in order to be able to go out to the streets (Skaine, 2002,
p:71). Nonetheless, as reported by PHR, wearing burqas caused a number of health
problems. An Afghan woman states that walking and seeing with burqa is highly hard.
According to PHR, wearing burqa might lead to eye problems, depression, asthma, skin rash,
cardiac problems, hair loss and itching of the scalp (Skaine, 2002, p:71). In 1997, Taliban
made new rules about health services for women. The new laws prohibited women from
getting food and aid, which could be provided only by their male relatives. This situation
made it more difficult for widows to find food and aid. Despite the Taliban regime’s
restricting women’s rights to work, a few female doctors and nurses were able to continue
their jobs since women could only see female doctors. The negative side of Taliban’s
permission was that female doctors and nurses were beaten by their female colleagues
(Skaine, 2002, p:71). Women were frequently beaten for trying to get medical aid, but,
usually, they were unable to get it even though they were in the medical services. The
Taliban prohibited male doctors from accepting female patients if they were not their
relatives.
Moving from one place to another, losing their family members in the war, Taliban killing
their family members were common experiences for Afghan women. 84% of women told
that one or more family members were killed in the war; the most reported adversity were
poverty (69 percent), disease (68 percent), emotional difficulties (63 percent), lack of health
care (54 percent), lack of education (51 percent) and inadequate sanitation (50 percent)
during the Taliban rule (Skaine, 2002, p:73). It was apparent that Afghan women mostly
experienced violation of their human rights. Men also had some restrictions under the
Taliban regime. They had to grow beards as instructed. Taliban regarded beard as one of the
symbols of Islam just like veil. According to Christiane Amanpour’s reports to CNN in 1997 “
the men were beaten if they did not grow beards, which is not accepted in Islam, and they
also had to wear Islamic clothes such as a cap, just like the women do” ( Skaine, 2002, p:74).
More than two thousand people were in prisons, most of whom were poor people from
working class. Although the Red Cross delivered aid to the prisoners, most of these aids
could not make it to the prisoners. The prisoners were exposed to different tortures. A lot of
young girls and women were traded for prostitution or they killed themselves. What is more,
in case the girls or women were raped, they were killed by their family members. The Co-
operation Centre for Afghan revealed that several prisons had hundreds of female convicts
in Kabul and more than four hundred women were in prisons at Karez Bazaar in Kandahar
(Skaine, 2002, p:75). Female convicts were allowed only two loaves of bread a day and they
did not have the right to see their relatives.

Afghanistan was not a safe place for all Afghans. For this very reason, a lot of people escaped
from Afghanistan to Iran and Pakistan. Between the years 1996 and 1999, more than
1,400,000 Afghan citizens left for Iran, more than 1,200,000 people sought refuge in Pakistan
and few people escaped to India and Central Asian Republics after 1997. A study conducted
by JAMA revealed that three quarters of the refuge population were composed of women
and children (Skaine, 2002, p:76). It was Afghan women’s preference to live in the refugee
camps rather than Afghanistan since they had better living conditions in the camps. One of
these conditions was that they had separate rooms for their children. However, there were
problems too in refugee camps such as theft, kidnapping or killing; that is to say, there was
anarchy in the camps from time to time. Also, women living in the camps were not able to
complete their education for many reasons.