two other developments were arguably much more grave in their
impact. One was the immediate exclusion of women from most
paid employment (Skaine, 2002: 61–86). During Rabbani’s govern-
ment, as I witnessed on many occasions, women lectured at the
University of Kabul, provided 70 per cent of school teachers
(Dupree, 1998: 154), and played an important role in the health
sector. Some of these women were widows, of whom there were
50,000 in Kabul in January 1997 (Dupree, 1998: 155), and did not
have male breadwinners to whom they could look for support. The
consequences for these women and their children of loss of paid
employment were therefore catastrophic. While some women
health workers were subsequently allowed back to work, the health
consequences for women remained grim, since female patients
were also segregated (Amnesty International, 1999c: 4–5). Reports
by Physicians for Human Rights documented the scale of women’s
suffering as a result of these policies (Physicians for Human
Rights, 1998a; Physicians for Human Rights, 2001).
The other development was the emergence of the practice of
forcing young girls into marriage with Taliban. I heard of this
practice from informants in Kabul shortly after the Taliban took
the city (Maley, 2000a: 18), and it was subsequently noted in a UN
report (United Nations, 2000, para. 12). On the basis of interviews
in Kabul after the Taliban left, Matthew Campbell concluded that
‘hundreds of women were abducted, forcibly married, raped or
sold into sexual slavery by Taliban fighters’ (Campbell, 2001).
Since sex within a forced marriage is actually a form of rape, such
behaviour violated the very principles which the Taliban leaders
purported to be defending. It was also deeply hypocritical, given
that the Taliban were quite willing to stone women for the ‘crime’
of adultery (Burns, 1996). Such hypocrisy is typical of neofunda-
mentalists such as the Taliban (Roy, 1994: 197).
Political freedoms
Since the Taliban did not recognise any realm of legitimate political
contestation, political freedom did not exist in the areas over which
238 The Afghanistan Wars