Five Years Since The Taliban Takeover and the Plight of Afghan Women Today
It has been five years since the lives of the Afghan people irrevocably changed. Today, a half-decade of Taliban rule and the desecration of all things equality, human rights, and hope. What had been fought against for twenty years had returned to power, victimising in full force the women and the children and the men who needed a lifeline. The Taliban, an unrecognised de facto government, has ruled Afghanistan for five years, imposing gender-based restrictions on women and girls in the process.
Afghan people have been abandoned by the West; American and British troops and embassy staff distastefully exited the country with full force, all haste. When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, they dismantled the laws and the institutions that enshrined women’s rights; they also rid the judicial system of women, a mechanical purging to demonstrate to the world a shift in the ether of political and civic liberties.
It’s a dark and deeply scathing reality, now.
The Taliban are an ideological and extremist religious group in government until their fall in 2001, following the September 11th attacks and the U.S-led military intervention in the country (Weigand, 2017). After twenty years, they staged a significant resurgence, taking province by province, regaining influence and control; in late August 2021, the Taliban stormed the capital, Kabul (Council on Foreign Relations, 2026).
Their actions have often been described as one of the most formative and poignant moments in Middle Eastern history.
When British forces swiftly fled Afghanistan as the Taliban inched closer to Kabul, the issue of protecting Afghan diplomatic staff who had dedicated their lives in service to intelligence and politics was at the forefront of mainstream media.
Afghan interpreters, security guards, and defense staff who were eligible to be relocated to the UK were left behind, forced into hiding, abandoned by the government that promised to protect and defend, not by cowardly departing with a haste of self-preservation (Kelly, 2022). Much discourse on British and American actions in Afghanistan in 2021 has been widely critiqued, particularly on the ethics and absence of logistical planning during the withdrawal.
Furthermore, the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee published a 2022 report noting that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a ‘disaster’ and that the FCDO failed in its efforts to make reasonable efforts in planning and providing a timeline for withdrawal that considers the unpredictable nature of the Taliban (Foreign Affairs Committee, 2022). This was an exceptional failure, as the Taliban had set off suicide bombs directly outside Kabul International Airport during the evacuations.
The UK Government’s response to the report outlines the lessons that must be learned from this experience, an overused and deeply implorable excuse that lacks true empathy for the Afghan people it not only left behind, but actively allowed to be victimised by the Taliban, who have been inflicting barbaric brutality against its citizens for five years now.
Under the Taliban, women and girls in Afghanistan face deep discrimination against their personal, professional, and educational rights. The intensified scrutiny of their personal lives, restricting their movement and ability to speak, particularly in a climate of humanitarian disaster and poverty in the country, has exacerbated the issue of women’s rights as a disproportionate issue. The Taliban’s decrees against women and girls are almost impossible to fathom. Decree No. 18 permits child marriage; Decree No. 12 provides men with legal authority in a marriage (UN Women, n.d.).
Women and girls’ access to justice has been stripped, and the probabilities of maternal and neonatal deaths have skyrocketed, following the restrictions on women doctors, nurses, or health workers. Alongside the limit to women and girls’ access to education, this is expected to worsen in the decades to come.
Girls in Afghanistan are no longer allowed to continue to secondary or higher education, and are therefore less likely to acquire employment in the fields of education, healthcare, journalism, and politics.
The cuts to aid and organisational assistance in Afghanistan have had a detrimental effect on Afghan women and girls. In addition to this, monetary and humanitarian assistance from the U.S. has dwindled. The very actor that sheepishly withdrew when faced with a real issue–theTaliban–has done little to support the ongoing humanitarian disaster and the plight of Afghan women. During President Trump’s second year of his second Administration, he cut USAID to Afghanistan and all other foreign aid programs.
Most detrimentally, the Trump Administration also removed gendered language from multilateral commitments and documents, an erosion of fundamental women’s rights. The vulnerability and cuts to services designed to protect women and girls from Gender-Based Violence (GBV), poor mental health, and detrimental sexual and reproductive health have led to an endangered reality in Afghanistan.
With the withdrawal of foreign services, aid, and assistance, the emergence of gender backsliding–the reversal of commitments and policies designed to protect gender equality–makes the plight of Afghan women and girls a formidable and stark reality (Cone, 2026).
Women and girls in Afghanistan have been failed, not just by the deplorable and barbaric actions of the Taliban over the last five years, but by the Western governments, particularly the UK and the U.S, who have done little to support and mitigate the humanitarian crisis present throughout the country and the Taliban’s efforts to bring an Islamic fundamentalist doctrine to life.
Without a coordinated and sincere intervention to end the Taliban’s stint in power, the lives of Afghan women and girls will forever be tainted by the calculated choices made by the West.
References
Cone. (2026, January 29). “No One Cares About Us Anymore”: How U.S. Aid Cuts Have Intensified the Crisis for Women and Girls in Afghanistan. Refugees International. Available at: https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/no-one-cares-about-us-anymore/Council on Foreign Relations. (2026, February 27). The Taliban in Afghanistan. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/taliban-afghanistanForeign Affairs Committee. (2022).
‘Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report’. Available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmfaff/630/report.htmlUN Women. (n.d.). FAQs:
What it’s like to be a woman in Afghanistan today. Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/faqs/faqs-afghanistanWeigand, F. (2017)
‘Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 11(3), pp. 359–381. doi: 10.1080/17502977.2017.1353755.
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