No Place Like Home: The Modern Dilemma For Displaced Afghan Women

In August 2021, the world stood still upon witnessing the heart-wrenching images of hundreds of Afghan people chasing commercial airplanes on the Hamid Karzai International Airport’s runway. This mass escape attempt was the result of the US withdrawing its military forces and the subsequent takeover of Afghanistan’s government by the Taliban. According to the Pentagon, the United States assisted in the evacuation of 125,000 international passport-carrying people, most of whom were staff members of the American Embassy and other affiliated NGOs. While a few Afghan families and individuals with valid visas (most of whom were men) successfully secured passage out of the country, thousands of others were not so fortunate. In order to obtain a visa, those attempting to leave Afghanistan must pass Taliban checkpoints, contend with Consulate offices' inconvenient business hours, and present personal documents they may have already destroyed for their own safety. Though several countries, including India, Canada, and Pakistan, have offered assistance in providing safe passage out of Afghanistan, options for those seeking to leave are generally so limited, that many have resorted to climbing on the hulls of commercial airplanes.

Panic was further aggravated by Taliban representative, Zabihullah Mujahid, who said in a press conference on August 24, 2021, that Afghan nationals would be barred from leaving Afghanistan. The Taliban later revised their statement three days after the United States’ departure, affirming that anyone with valid travel credentials would be allowed to leave the country. The US’s involvement in Afghanistan’s national exodus came to an end after the Hamid Karzai Airport suffered a bombing attack on August 26th, 2021, killing 170 Afghans and 13 Americans. Since then, regular news cycles in the West have failed to adequately cover the experiences of those attempting to flee the country, and public opinion has essentially forgotten about these refugees.

According to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), there are, in total, 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees across the world, and another 3.5 million Afghans categorized as internationally displaced peoples. Since the initial evacuation began in May 2021, it is estimated that nearly a quarter of a million people have left Afghanistan, 80 percent of whom are women and children. Millions of displaced Afghan people have sought asylum in either Pakistan or Iran. However, according to Human Rights Watch, Iran has restricted access to education and various public services for Afghan refugees, police brutality against refugees has been reported in Pakistan, and both countries have a prominent track record of deportation sans trial. Beyond blatant discrimination, states accepting Afghan refugees have also failed to take into account the logistical struggle of obtaining official refugee status, through which they could theoretically leave Afghanistan, as well as the systemic problems awaiting them in other countries. For many Afghan women, the choice then becomes either suffering the persecution of the Taliban in their home country or facing similar risks elsewhere. 

In Afghan Women and Girls Under Immediate Threat: The Responsibility to Protect and Assist Is Just Beginning, author Devon Cone restates a popular claim that Afghan women have paid the highest price as a result of the Taliban’s recent rise in power. She writes extensively about the atrocities and discrimination that women in Afghanistan face under Taliban rule including, but not limited to, crimes against their human rights, restricted access to education and healthcare, and involuntary marriages. The Taliban also plans to ban co-ed schools and the right for women to participate in their own government. Though the clear risk posed to Afghan women’s lives is no small concern, the very notion of progress itself is also at stake—not just for women today, but for all generations that will follow. Women who are civil rights activists, lawyers, business owners, journalists, etc. are especially at risk for challenging the ideology of the current regime. Many young women in their early twenties, Cone writes, have grown up in a world that promised them education and employment opportunities. The Taliban’s claim to power could mean, not just life and death to countless innocent individuals, but an end to any kind of gender equality in Afghanistan. 

Several online resources have criticized the international community’s dramatically underwhelming response to such an overwhelmingly urgent issue. The UNHCR has projected that 1.4 million Afghan people are in need of resettlement. The United States has committed to welcoming 125,000 refugees from around the world, 35,000 of which would be from the Near East and Central Asia. Cone argues that both numbers are pitifully low and that the overall ceiling ought to be raised to a figure closer to 200,000. Several other countries have also pledged to take in thousands of refugees, but none as many as the United States. And though the resettlement of displaced Afghan women has been and continues to be a major issue so far neglected in popular discourse, this conversation does not even take into account the numerous humanitarian needs of those who are still in Afghanistan. Food is scarce, gasoline is expensive, one-third of the COVID tests taken last year in Afghanistan were positive, and gender-based violence is on an epidemic rise. 

Between the difficulty of acquiring the right kind of visa, discrimination on the basis of sex and gender in their home country, the unwillingness of the global community to offer more assistance to displaced people, and the absence of the media’s attention on this issue, thousands upon thousands of Afghan refugees, mostly women, have been backed into a corner. This crisis stands no chance of being remedied if it is not acknowledged by whatever means available.

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