Taliban Tightens Curbs on Women 5 Years After Takeover as West Splits on Engagement
Updated
Updated · BBC.com · Aug 14
Taliban Tightens Curbs on Women 5 Years After Takeover as West Splits on Engagement
3 articles · Updated · BBC.com · Aug 14
Summary
Five years after seizing Kabul, the Taliban is still narrowing one of the few spaces left for women to work, with new rules requiring men to take products to market and staff trade-fair stalls.
Those curbs sit alongside bans on girls' education beyond age 12 and broader exclusion from public life, deepening doubts that Western pressure, sanctions and aid cuts have changed Taliban policy.
22 million Afghans now depend on foreign assistance, pushing the UN and aid groups to keep negotiating practical access even as they describe progress as slow, incremental and often reversed.
More than 40 Afghan embassies are now under Taliban control, and countries including Russia, China and regional states are expanding ties, feeding criticism that technical contacts risk creeping normalization.
The debate has hardened into whether stricter conditions or quieter diplomacy can win concessions, but many officials and activists say any durable change is more likely to come from within Afghanistan.