Why The World Can’t Save The Women Of Afghanistan

-Analysis-

PARIS — This week, the Taliban closed one of the last remaining windows of freedom for Afghan women: a radio station broadcasting from Kabul and aimed at women.

Radio Begum was launched on March 8, 2021, before the Taliban’s return to power. But after the Islamist movement’s take over of Kabul five months later, it had become indispensable. Radio Begum provided educational support for girls deprived of schooling. It offered an interactive antenna open to Afghan women to talk about their joys and sorrows. It provided a virtual living space for those deprived of it in the real world.

On Tuesday, the Taliban raided the radio station’s studio in Kabul, arresting two male employees, who have remained in custody, and suspending their right to broadcast. Officially, the radio station is accused of supplying programs to a television station that has been broadcasting by satellite from Paris for the past year, Télé Begum, which is more threating to the Taliban because it is based abroad.

The radio station is being held hostage in order to put pressure on the television station, according to the presenters of both media. In any case, this is yet another act in the isolation of Afghan women, which is unprecedented in the world.

“Protected” from temptation

For a little more than three years, the Taliban have been gradually eliminating women’s visibility in society. It began with a ban on girls going to high school, and is regularly followed by new decrees restricting women’s freedoms.

At the end of 2024, a decree signed by the Taliban leader obliged owners of houses to reduce the size of windows in rooms where women might be present. “To protect neighbors from temptation,” according to the text, but also to make women even less visible.

Another decree had already banned them from singing or reciting poetry. That ban had already hit Radio Begum before it was suspended, allowing not even the slightest musical jingle or poetry, an important genre in Afghanistan.

Ties with China

The world is not turning a blind eye to this situation, but the problem is that it lacks the means to put pressure on the Taliban. Since the fall of Kabul, Westerners have had virtually no diplomatic representation in the Afghan capital, and few exchanges with the Taliban.

The Afghan regime is also breaking out of its initial isolation by forging ties with China and the Gulf states: Those countries are doing so for geopolitical or economic reasons, and have no intention of addressing the plight of women.

The concept of “gender apartheid,” is gaining ground.

The United Nations has taken up the issue, with the High Commissioner for Human Rights reminding us that “no country can progress by excluding half its population from public life.”

The concept of “gender apartheid,” a spin on South Africa’s system of racial discrimination, is gaining ground. It’s a good way of putting it, and an effective way of understanding what Afghan women are going through in the name of a destructive ideology.

But it does nothing to change their fate, and their imprisonment, which has been accentuated by the end of the ray of hope that was Radio Begum.