THE TALIBAN AND THE WORLD
The impact of gender
The Taliban’s treatment of women became an international issue
within days of the occupation of Kabul, and attracted the attention
of prominent feminists. On 29 September 1997, the European
Union Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Emma Bonino,
was detained by the Taliban during a visit to what had been desig-
nated by the Taliban as a women’s hospital. The resulting publicity
was damning (Amanpour, 1997). Bonino became a frontline critic
of the Taliban and the European Parliament adopted ‘Flowers for
the Women of Kabul’ as a slogan for the following International
Women’s Day, 8 March 1998. The resulting demonstrations led
Taliban radio to describe International Women’s Day as a ‘conspir-
acy’ by ‘the infidels of the world under the leadership of Emma
Bonino’ and to complain of ‘the provocation which has been
launched by Christendom against the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan’ (BBC Summary of World BroadcastsFE/3172/A/1, 11
March 1998). Then, on 18 November1997, during a visit to an
Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright described Taliban policies towards women as ‘despicable’
(Reuters, 18 November 1997). This was a heavy blow for the
Taliban, as it made clear that domestic political pressure on the
issue of gender had forced the Clinton Administration to abandon
its muted response to the rise of the Taliban in favour of overt
criticism. This process had actually begun within days of their
takeover (Sciolino, 1996).
For the Taliban, time was out of joint. The UN International
Women’s Conference in Beijing in September 1995 endorsed a
reform agenda profoundly out of step with the policies of the
Taliban, and a strong network of pressure groups was committed to
giving effect to that agenda. The Feminist Majority Foundation
under Eleanor Smeal took a strong lead in criticising the Taliban,
with help from American celebrities such as Mavis Leno and
Lionel Richie (Waxman, 1999; Mann, 1999). These US groups
242 The Afghanistan Wars