stories on the death of Najibullah, they searched for other things to
report. They did not have far to look. The Taliban were by a wide
margin the least feminist movement on the face of the earth, and
their immediate implementation of repressive policies towards
women guaranteed them a blast of adverse publicity. It was a blast
from which they were never to recover.
Women’s rights to education and health
The Taliban were profoundly aggrieved by the ways in which their
policies towards women were received. From their point of view,
Afghanistan before their emergence had been wracked by violence
and disorder, of which women were the main victims. Their obli-
gation as men and as Muslims was to protect women’s ‘honour’.
Their solution was to confine women in the home, where they
would be surrounded only by children, other women, and men who
by virtue of being relatives could be expected to treat them hon-
ourably. They saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. But restric-
tions on women served a wider purpose as well, symbolically
asserting the right to interfere in even the most intimate aspects of
individuals’ lives (Dupree, 1998: 151). Indeed, the very triviality of
the Taliban’s early decrees on personal conduct – which banned
tape cassettes, beard trimming, kite flying, pictures and portraits,
dancing at wedding parties, the playing of drums, and ‘British and
American hairstyles’ (United Nations, 1997: Appendix I) – pointed
to this deeper agenda. Such decrees were notuniversally enforced
- without a state, universal enforcement was impossible – but citi-
zens always ran the risk of falling foul of the Religious Police, and
this was sufficient in most cases to produce compliance. Only in
rural areas was the situation more relaxed; there, the indefatigable
Swedish Committee for Afghanistan ran a robust network of girls’
schools (Najimi, 1997).
Decrees issued by the Religious Police banned women from
travelling unless accompanied by a close male relative (mahram),
and swathed in a tent-like garment, the burqa. These restraints on
personal freedom were stifling enough for educated women, but
The Rise and Rule of the Taliban, 1994-2001 237