It has been almost three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. In that time, women have become prisoners in their own homes and targets of violence if they venture outdoors alone.
Now, the United Nations is investigating reports of rape, gang rape, sex slavery and forced abortions of women held in Taliban jails.
Women’s rights advocates have long warned that women and girls are enduring appalling abuses under the Taliban’s autarkic regime
The reports, first published in a respected Afghan media outlet, are the first detailed accounts of women being systematically abused for sex by Taliban operatives and commanders.
The reports have drawn the concern of the US State Department and the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Bennett, who has launched an urgent probe.
Bennett said the report published in May by Hasht-e-Subh Daily (known as 8AM) detailing shocking treatment of women detained on flimsy premises and locked up for months without legal representation or access to their families, potentially plumbed new extremes of abuse. 8AM won an Emmy Award with the New York Times in 2023 for investigating Taliban atrocities.
Its report contains such horrific accounts of physical and sexual abuse, and arbitrary killings of women imprisoned in three northern provinces, that it warranted independent checks, Bennett told The Spectator.
‘We are taking it seriously, we have a team looking into it, to see if we can verify,’ Bennett said. ‘In general, I am aware of serious ill treatment of detainees, not only sexual but beatings, threats, extortion.’
Titled ‘From Torture to Sexual Assault and Murder: What’s Happening in the Taliban’s Women’s Prisons?’ the report says that 90 women in prisons in Samangan, Jawzjan and Faryab provinces were raped by Taliban militants who took over security at night, after female guards, cleaners and medical staff ended their day shifts.
Senior and lower ranking Taliban figures are alleged to have entered the prisons at night to sexually assault the women. Women were also taken to the homes of Taliban commanders, where they were sexually assaulted and returned to prison at daybreak.
Sixteen of the women became pregnant after ‘repeated sexual assault and have undergone abortions in local clinics,’ the report said. The women were taken to hospital under Taliban armed guard, and kept separate from other patients and most medical staff while abortions were performed, usually in the third or fifth month of pregnancy, it said. It attributed the information to unnamed ‘prisoners who experienced mistreatment.’
‘One released prisoner affirms that at least four female prisoners in Samangan province fell seriously ill as a result of repeated sexual assaults by Taliban members and were ultimately executed by the Taliban,’ the report said.
It also quoted a female doctor at a hospital in Maymana, the provincial capital of Faryab, as saying ‘the Taliban transferred 13 female prisoners to the gynaecology department… after sexually assaulting them, and these women underwent abortions.’ Multiple women were taken to the hospital bleeding following sexual abuse, and showing signs of torture, another doctor said.
Bennett has visited Afghanistan a number of times since the republic government collapsed and has released reports detailing abuses, which the Taliban leadership has denied. He has branded Afghanistan lawless.
He said he suspected the prisons in the 8AM report were run by the General Directorate of Intelligence, the Taliban secret service, or privately by regional commanders, which would put them outside the authority of the Office of Prisons Administration, which he described as ‘of less concern’.
Women’s rights advocates have long warned that women and girls are enduring appalling abuses under the Taliban’s autarkic regime.
In the last months of the war, in 2021, as the Taliban stormed to victory, reports emerged in regions they captured of terrible treatment, including forced marriages that equated to sex slavery.
A recent series of reports by the George. W. Bush Institute, called Captured State, said: ‘The Taliban’s acquisition of wives – often through force and the manipulation of a family’s desperation – is also leveraged to collect on debts or bolster support from loyalists.’
On retaking control of the country, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban immediately set about dismantling the constitutional human rights put in place by the western-backed government to protect women from abuses that are now enforced as state policy.
Women who called for their rights to be protected were beaten in the streets, and many who were imprisoned in the weeks and months after the Taliban takeover said they had been subject to brutal beatings and sexual assault.
Many women are reluctant to talk, even anonymously, about their ordeals, leading to a lack of substantial evidence of Taliban brutality. There is still a cultural expectation of chastity in the country, with a perception of dishonour for any sexual contact outside marriages. In some communities, there is also a tradition of blaming female victims.
Lack of sex education might mean that many women do not understand what has happened to them. Many fear that revealing they’ve been sexually assaulted will bring shame on their families, and they will not be able to marry. Multiple women who initially said they would talk about their experiences have later reneged.
As a result, investigators like Bennett and other non-government organisations have gathered anecdotal and hearsay reports of disturbing abuse with little solid backup. While the 8AM report is yet to be independently verified, the allegations don’t surprise some experts.
Heather Barr, the associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said the Taliban regarded women as chattel needing constant supervision to ensure they behave ‘decently’ and do not dishonour male relatives. Errant behaviour – such as leaving their homes alone, protesting violations of their rights, or desiring an education or career – is seen by the Taliban as rightly incurring punishment, so in the Taliban’s worldview ‘they had it coming,’ she said.
It is unlikely that there will be any consequences for the Taliban’s treatment of women. International aid, including cash deliveries of tens of millions of dollars, continues to flow into the country. There is nothing to stop the Taliban doubling-down on its systemic repression.
Supreme Leader Haibatullah Arkhundzada has re-introduced execution by stoning, taunting human rights defenders: ‘You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death. But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery.’
Attention has largely turned away from Afghanistan, with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The Taliban are not recognised as a legitimate government, but they have the tacit support of Russia, China and other countries like Japan and Turkey with ambassadors in Kabul. Kazakhstan has just delisted the Taliban as a terrorist organisation, and Russia is said to be moving in that direction.
There is concern that the United States could be moving toward recognition, or at least reopening its Kabul embassy. In response, Afghan women’s rights groups have called for a boycott of a July meeting in Doha, Qatar organised by the UN with the aim of drawing the Taliban into engagement with the international community.
The Taliban refused to attend a similar meeting in February but have confirmed their attendance at the upcoming meeting. Their participation is unlikely to improve conditions for women in this economic and humanitarian basket case.
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