According to a report, up to 50 Afghan women protested on the streets in Herat, Afghanistan’s western city, in a rare, defiant demonstration for the right to work and the lack of female participation in the Taliban’s new government. The Taliban said they were close to forming a new government as soon as Friday, just days after US troops withdrew from Afghanistan amid chaos and desperate Afghans attempted to flee the country.
Basira Taheri, one of the organisers of the protest, told AFP she wanted the Taliban to include women in the new cabinet. “We want the Taliban to hold consultations with us. We don’t see any women in their gatherings and meetings,” Taheri said on Thursday.
“It is our right to have education, work and security. We are not afraid, we are united,” the demonstrators said, according to an AFP journalist who witnessed the protest in the relatively cosmopolitan city, where girls have already returned to school.
According to two people familiar with the situation, the announcement of a cabinet could happen on Friday after afternoon prayers, according to AFP. All eyes are on the Taliban, who have promised to govern in a more moderate manner than they did during their brutal reign from 1996 to 2001, to see if they can keep their promise about women’s participation and manage a war-torn economy.
Senior Taliban leader Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai has told BBC Pashto in an interview that while women could continue working, there “may not” be a place for them in the cabinet of any future government or any other top post. He was a hardliner in the first Taliban administration.
Beheshta Arghand, the first female Afghan journalist to interview a Taliban official live on television and then escape the country fearing for her life, told AFP in Qatar that women in Afghanistan were “in a very bad situation”. “I want to say to the international community — please do anything (you can) for Afghan women,” Arghand, the former anchor for the Tolo News media group, said.
According to two people familiar with the situation, the announcement of a cabinet could happen on Friday after afternoon prayers, according to AFP. All eyes are on the Taliban, who have promised to govern in a more moderate manner than they did during their brutal reign from 1996 to 2001, to see if they can keep their promise about women’s participation and manage a war-torn economy.
