Afghan Women Stage Rare Herat Protest, Defying Taliban Curbs on 21.7 Million Females
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 21
Afghan Women Stage Rare Herat Protest, Defying Taliban Curbs on 21.7 Million Females
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 21
Summary
A rare June protest in Herat brought women and men into the streets to demand education, work and freedom despite violent Taliban crackdowns, arrests and a media blackout.
The demonstration came against a wider system of repression that has barred girls from school, imposed dress and phone restrictions, and tightened control over marriage, divorce and movement.
Taliban rules have scrapped the minimum marriage age, allowed "corrective beating" by husbands and closed most shelters for abused women, while morality police pursue women who try to flee.
Women and girls account for 75% to 80% of recorded suicide cases and attempts in Afghanistan, the report says, as bans on male treatment and a shrinking pool of female doctors deepen the crisis.
Even so, Afghan women are still opening secret schools, documenting abuses online under pseudonyms and organizing resistance nearly five years after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
With a new 2026 decree legally trapping girls in child marriages, how are desperate Afghan women finding ways to escape this codified oppression?
Despite facing live fire and morality police, how are underground networks successfully running secret schools for the millions of girls banned from education?
As female doctors vanish and male doctors are banned from treating women, how is an underground healthcare network fighting the maternal mortality crisis?