Women’s Struggle is the Frontline of Struggle for New Democratic Revolution in Afghanistan
This year we are celebrating 8 March, international women’s day, at a time when women are suffering under the yoke of a misogynist gender apartheid regime, which is systematically depriving women of their fundamental human rights. From the very beginning of their rise to power, the Taliban banned women from education and work, making Afghanistan the only country in the world to forbid education for women. In the following months, the Taliban banned women from traveling without a male chaperone, appearing on TV, and even broadcasting women’s voices. They reintroduced all the oppressive policies they first put in place in the 1990s, the first time they ruled over the country. The list of the Taliban’s restrictions targeting women is anything but brief. However, women didn’t remain silent. They used all their minimal resources, organized themselves in small groups, took to the streets and indoor spaces, and protested the Taliban’s reactionary anti-women policies. The Taliban have responded by scaling up violence and repression, using rifle butts, iron rods, and batons to beat and disperse women demonstrators. They even abducted and detained women activists and their relatives to suppress the protest movement. Despite the Taliban’s ban on women’s public appearance and a ban on broadcast of women’s voices and faces, the group released videos of the women activists abducted, forcing them to falsely confess that their struggle for women’s rights was encouraged by foreign agents. Moreover, women’s headless or bullet-ridden bodies are being discovered all over the country without anyone taking responsibility. The Taliban suppress reports about these killings, and in rare cases when they provide explanations, they dismiss them as “family feuds.” The Taliban’s misogyny and anti-women policies have created an environment of total impunity for femicide.
No conciliation is possible between women’s basic demands and the Taliban Islamic Emirate. The Taliban practically demonstrated that they are ready to compromise with all, including the imperialists and their other reactionary foes, but not with women. Because giving in to the elementary demands of women goes against the Taliban’s fundamental ideological principles of creating an “Islamic” dystopia where women do not participate in social life, and their role is limited to the domestic realm. Suppressing women’s social and political role and eliminating them from public life is the primary method of Taliban “Islamising” society and implementing their social and political programs. Therefore, the Taliban are systematically targeting women’s social and political participation, banning them from employment and education. Even though the women’s movement is young and inexperienced in Afghanistan, it has courageously confronted the Taliban regime and stirred many into political activism, street demonstrations, and other forms of political actions to oppose the Taliban’s gender apartheid. The movement currently has a spontaneous character and lacks organizational coherence and political program, making it difficult to function under the Taliban’s severe repression, where no voices of dissent are tolerated. For the movement to consolidate and grow, there is a need for a clear political program and underground, professional leadership circles and organizations. It is the job of all revolutionary forces to tirelessly work to prepare for the theoretical and practical necessities of organizing and expanding women’s movement, alongside the struggle of other toiling masses. Women’s struggle in Afghanistan against patriarchy and gender oppression is central to the struggle for the new democratic revolution in the country. Without widespread women’s participation and leadership, the success of the new democratic revolution is unimaginable. Therefore, organizing and uniting with the women’s movement will be relentlessly pursued. Our party is determined to relentlessly organize among women and rectify our theoretical and practical shortcomings and drawbacks in this important trench of struggle against reaction and imperialism. The Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan upholds that women’s struggle against patriarchy and gender oppression is an inseparable and a crucial part of the struggle of the proletariat and the toiling masses against the horrors of capitalism and imperialism. Overthrowing patriarchy is an important objective of the new democratic revolution in Afghanistan.
Long live revolutionary women’s movement!
Down with the Taliban’s gender apartheid regime!
Communist (Maoist) Party Afghanistan
8 March 2022