After the Taliban’s triumphant advance, Afghan women fear for their freedoms. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai criticized the Allied withdrawal and called on the international community to stand up for women’s rights and educational opportunities.
A few days after the Taliban came to power, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai spoke out on the situation of women in Afghanistan. Education opportunities have been open to millions of women and girls in the past twenty years. The return of the Taliban jeopardizes these opportunities, she wrote in one. Malala Yousafzai had already commented on Twitter on Monday. “I am deeply concerned about women, minorities and human rights advocates,” wrote the 24-year-old, asking local and global politicians for immediate humanitarian aid to protect refugees and civilians.
In view of the current situation in Afghanistan, she could not help but think back to her childhood, wrote Yousafzai in the newspaper article. In 2007 the Taliban took over parts of Pakistan – including the hometown of their family in the Pakistani Swat Valley, a good 70 kilometers away. In 2012, the then 15-year-old schoolgirl was gunned down by Taliban fighters in her home village because she had previously opposed the school ban and campaigned for the right to education. After the attack, the family fled to Great Britain. In 2012 Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has been the UN Ambassador for Peace since 2017.
“Women’s fear is real”
She herself is grateful for her educational path and the opportunities that open up for her. “Having graduated last year and now pursuing my own career, I can hardly imagine losing it all again – living a life ruled by men with guns.”
Women and girls in Afghanistan were now desperate again for fear of never seeing the inside of a classroom or holding a book in their hands. Even if the Taliban are currently more open, the story in which women’s rights were violently suppressed is an indication that “women’s fear is real.” Reports from women and students who no longer go to the office or to the universities are already increasing.
“Afghans as pledge for ideological proxy wars”
The education and peace activist also directed her criticism to the international community. Nothing of what is happening in the country is new to Afghans, who have been trapped in proxy wars by global superpowers for generations. Children were born in these wars, families had lived in refugee camps for years and were now trying to flee. “The Taliban’s Kalashnikovs are a heavy burden on the shoulders of the Afghan people. The countries that the Afghans used as pledge for their ideological struggles and greed have now left behind to bear this burden themselves,” criticized Yousafzai in their contribution.
At the same time, she called on the international community to provide humanitarian aid. She herself spoke to supporters of educational institutions in Afghanistan in the past few weeks. The need is great there. Humanitarian aid is needed to save families from hunger and to enable children to continue to be educated. “We will still have enough time to debate what went wrong in the Afghanistan war, but in this critical situation we have to listen to the voices of Afghan women and girls. They ask for protection for education, for freedom and the future that they are themselves hoped. We cannot abandon them. We have no time to waste. “
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