‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017with these parda regulations so that their female staff could continue
working. This included separate offices, access doors and even buildings
for men and women. Some female staff ended up working from home,
while some of those who were laid off continued to receive their salaries.
Female state employees who were dismissed because of the Taliban rules or
programme closures were not so fortunate and much hardship ensued, for
with the economy in tatters and rampant inflation, even basic commodities
were scarce or beyond the means of ordinary people. The health sector
was particularly hard hit by the segregation laws for there were very few
women-only hospitals in Afghanistan and relatively few female doctors,
particularly gynaecologists and obstetricians. Since male medical person-
nel were forbidden to see, let alone touch, a woman, it was impossible to
take their pulse or temperature, let alone use a stethoscope. This led to the
farcical situation of male doctors trying to diagnose a woman’s condition
while she sat behind a curtain and answered the medic’s questions.
Tensions and confrontations between Western aid agencies and the
Taliban were frequent and later became internationalized by the Feminists
Majority Foundation of America, who damned the Taliban’s regulations as
‘gender apartheid’. In the end, several international organizations closed
their programmes rather than comply with the laws on segregation. As
international condemnation of the Taliban’s gender policies became
more and more strident, radicals on both sides of the ideological divide
deliberately engineered confrontations in order to prove a point.
The social restrictions were particularly resented in Kabul but in rural
communities and the Pushtun tribal belt, the gender regulations were
mostly business as usual, since concealment of women and strict separ-
ation of the sexes was the norm. Furthermore, while Afghanistan’s urban
populations and the middle classes resented the Taliban’s draconian rules
and regulations, the restoration of law and order after the anarchy of the
Rabbani era came as a welcome relief. The Taliban removed illegal check-
points, though they set up their own to police the new social decrees, and
travel on the highways became safe. Despite their distaste for the Taliban’s
gender policies, Western aid agencies found it safer and easier to deliver
urgent relief supplies to impoverished rural communities. Even educated
Afghans, who privately mocked the Taliban as pa-yi luch, or barefooted
hillbillies, grudgingly admitted that security had improved and that their
daughters were less at risk from the rapacity of mujahidin commanders –
provided, of course, they conformed to the Taliban’s regulations.
The loss of Kabul was a shattering blow to Jami‘at and Mas‘ud. In an
attempt to resist any further advances, Mas‘ud, Dostam and Hizb-i Wahdat