In 2021, the world abandoned Afghanistan. It has now been just over three years since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and the situation for women and girls just gets increasingly more frightening.

Earlier in the year, Taliban officials kidnapped, detained, and arrested young girls and women for violating the Taliban’s hijab rules — they called it wearing “bad hijab.” Some of these girls and women were subsequently beaten and lashed.

Now, the latest “vice and virtue” decree by the Taliban bans women’s voices and bare faces in public. It forbids women’s voices from being heard by men outside their families, as well as from singing, reciting poetry, or even speaking aloud in public, claiming that such voices are “intimate.” 

Women are also not allowed to look at men that they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa.

These restrictions are just the latest targeted attack on the dignity, identities, and existence of women and girls in Afghan society.

In some provinces, the Taliban has even banned the radio broadcast of educational programmes — a move that “extinguishes the last hope for girls’ education.” 

And the regime is refusing to answer questions from journalists about women and girls’ education, declaring them off-limits “until further notice.” 

Women and girls are not permitted to get any education above Grade 7 — which has now been banned for more than 1000 days. They cannot hold jobs, except in healthcare for women, such as nursing or midwifery. They cannot access the justice system. Women can no longer even get their hair done in beauty salons, which have all been closed by Taliban decree.

The regime is systematically erasing and rendering women invisible from society — day by day, step by step, decree by decree. Women are banned from studying, working, travelling, participating in public activities, and existing in most public spaces. There is a constant fear of what will be banned next. Earlier this year, the Taliban announced they will resume publicly flogging and stoning women to death for adultery.

Simultaneously, there’s been a surge in suicides, with Afghan women saying they’re prisoners in their homes.

Still, Afghanistan gets very little of the world’s attention. 

Many leading human rights organizations, academics, religious leaders, mainstream media, and influential institutions have remained virtually silent. With the lack of any meaningful actions, it seems that the international community has resigned itself to apathy. 

This has only emboldened the Taliban to step up its criminalization of women’s voices and bodies. 

While Afghanistan continues to suffer acute levels of homelessness, poverty, starvation, and unemployment, the extremist regime remains focused on silencing and controlling women.

And to ensure that the international community is even less informed going forward, the Taliban have recently barred the UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett from entering Afghanistan, who has been documenting human rights abuses under the Taliban regime.

During the first Taliban regime, between 1996 to 2001, they destroyed cultural heritage sites, massacred and engaged in the genocide of Hazaras, while swiftly and punitively implementing restrictions on women and girls. They are also responsible for countless suicide bombings and deaths of Afghans.

The Taliban’s “reforms” within the last year have destroyed artwork and more than 21,000 musical instruments. The draconian decrees of the Taliban are not rooted in Afghan culture or even religious tradition. The Taliban are extremists, trying to erase the identity and history of Afghanistan. 

This is not creating peace or security for the people of Afghanistan. These gender-based restrictions constitute nothing less than crimes against humanity.

Yet, on the international stage, there have been no actual consequences for the Taliban. The UN Security Council granted travel ban exemptions for Taliban leaders to travel to Saudi Arabia — and appallingly, also heeding to Taliban demands excluding women from the recent UN-sponsored Doha talks, reinforcing its claim for legitimacy.

The United Arab Emirates and China have both accepted Taliban ambassadors, signaling the normalization of international relationships with the Taliban. The U.S. has, and continues to, send millions to the Taliban. In fact, it’s the country’s biggest contributor. These funds from Washington are necessary, according to the UN, if Afghanistan is to avoid collapse.

This, at a time when countries around the world are deporting Afghans. Pakistan, a country that historically holds deep ties with the Taliban, continues to deport Afghans back to Afghanistan — in which more than 80 per cent are women and children. In the second phase of its deportation efforts, Pakistan is planning to deport more than 800,000 Afghans.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan is cultivating a boom in its tourism industry, thanks to TikTok travel influencers from the U.S., Europe, and the U.K., who simply ignore the human rights abuses happening all around them.

“Five reasons why Afghanistan should be your next trip,” the travel influencers gush, as reported by the BBC. Other tourists describe Afghanistan as “raw,” and “as far away from five-star resorts as you get.” Go to Afghanistan “if you want to see real life.”

The Taliban has been welcoming these social media travel vloggers and tourists into Afghanistan with open arms. Since the influencers are from abroad they are unaffected by the laws. Instead they parrot Taliban propaganda while enjoying a luxurious holiday in a country where locals continue to experience relentless campaigns of repression. They never ask questions. Some even pose for photos with Taliban officials.

This is the whitewashing and normalization of the Taliban. 

These vloggers and tourists are not only normalizing the Taliban, but also broadcasting a distorted version of Islam, which fosters Islamophobia and extremism. 

Three years after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghan women continue to resist the gender apartheid being imposed by the regime. Despite the ever-worsening oppression and constant attempts to erase them from public life, the women of Afghanistan continue to fight. 

Through art, underground and online schooling, wearing colourful clothing, breakdancing at the Olympics, and protests, the women of Afghanistan are the epitome of strength and hope.

Women like Zakia Khudadadi, a beacon of resilience and strength. Amid the heinous decrees of the Taliban, she fled the country and went on to win a bronze medal in taekwondo at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris — the first-ever to win a medal from the Refugee Paralympic Team.

And just this week, Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have been posting videos of themselves singing — a courageous act of defiance in protest of the Taliban’s laws banning women’s voices in public.

The women and girls of Afghanistan will be free. They will not be confined to the dark, open-air prison imposed on their lives, bodies, womanhood, and freedom. They will not be reduced to shadows. Their voices will be heard.

Ferdouse Asefi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.