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Womens Oppression in Afghanistan

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Womens Oppression in Afghanistan
Talibanning Women’s Rights: The Eternal Struggle Before the Taliban, a militant group that governed according to a strict sharia law, ruled Afghanistan in 1996, women were gaining rights and access to things they had never before hoped or imagined for. Once the Taliban came to power, all of the progress that they had made in the years past spiraled backwards and women had no rights throughout the entire country. The Taliban stood by a strict form of the Sharia, or Islamic, law. The Taliban interpreted this form of government in a way that provided no rights for women. After the Taliban gained control of the capital, Kabul, in 1996, women throughout all areas of the country had restrictions on what they could and could not do. Women and girls were not allowed to be educated or employed; they had to wear burkahs, full-body coverings that left only a small mesh-covered opening for the eyes, and they were not allowed to leave their homes without the accompaniment of a close male relative, among many more rules and restrictions. After the United States invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban in 2001, women in Kabul gained back a few rights, such as education and employment, but elsewhere in other cities and in the countryside, life is not so good. Because warlords now rule the land of the country outside of the capital, conditions today are scarily similar for women as to what they were when the Taliban ruled the country, and something needs to be done for the rights of women all over Afghanistan. This is easier said than done, however. It is an extremely hard problem to grasp, let alone solve. In 2010, the United States began attempting to implement a ten-year action plan to improve conditions for women in Afghanistan. This includes reforms that will improve women and girls’ access to education, work, healthcare, government and many more benefits. This will take a long time to come into action, however. Lack of women’s rights in Afghanistan is such a


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