Afghanistan, compulsory public Burqa for women

Since the world and especially western countries focused on Ukraine, Afghanistan's inexorable returns to the 1990s. With a decree made known yesterday in Kabul, the Taliban regime leader Mullah Hebatullah Akhonzada ordered women to cover themselves from head to toe every time they leave the house. 

We want our sisters to live with dignity and security, said, Mullah Khalid Hanafi the acting minister of the Virtue and Vice of the Taliban regime. For all women, it will be necessary to wear the hijab and the best hijab is the Chadori (the Afghan expression for what the west call burqa). All women who are neither too old nor too young must have to cover the face, with the exception of the eyes” specified in a document published by the local TV Tolo. 

The decision follows that removing women from most public jobs and banning girls over ten years of age from attending school, the first of the regime statement after they capture Kabul city. It marks another victory for the more conservative wing of the Taliban movement, which since coming to power has been waging a tough tug-of-war with the group that like more moderate policies, if only so as not to permanently remove the big names from the country. 

International organizations, with their help, keep a large part of a population exhausted by cold, hunger, and lack of prospects alive. “The time for a serious and strategic response to the Taliban progressive attack on women’s rights is long past” tweeted Heather Barr of Human rights watch. Voicing the bewilderment of NGOs and international agencies that have worked in Afghanistan, except for all the rights won in terms of education independence, autonomy, and fundamental freedoms to be canceled within a few months. 

Thousands of women have fled Afghanistan in recent months” first of all those who in the past years had worked mostly in the social field. But dozens were arrested or killed in the weeks following the fall of Kabul by groups of Taliban who searched them house by house, based on real lists. 

Yesterday’s decision will make the lives of those who remain in the country even more difficult, and not only from the point of view of rights. All these measures will do nothing but further avert the possibility of dialogue between the Taliban and western governments regarding international aid, essential for the survival of large sections of the population. 

Consequently, the conditions of hunger and misery in which millions of people live in this country are forgotten by everyone, explains Simona Lanzoni, the point of view of rights. All these measures will do nothing but dialogue between the Taliban and western governments regarding international aid, essential for the survival of large sections of the population. 

Consequently, the conditions of hunger and misery in which millions of people live in this country are forgotten by everyone explains Simona Lanzoni vice president of Fondazione Pangea Onlus, one of the NGOs that from the first moment worked today supports 70 thousand people with food aid in the cities and in the most remote areas of the country. 

 

Author: Francesca Caferri, 

Published: La Repubblica 

Translated: Najeeb Farzad