Afghanistan Hijab Rules: The Taliban have banned women from working, including limiting their travel.
Washington:
The United States will step in to increase pressure on Afghanistan’s Taliban government to reverse some of its recent decisions restricting the rights of women and girls if the radical group shows no signs of abating on its own.
“We have addressed this directly with the Taliban,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told a briefing on Monday. “We have many tools, if we think these will not be reversed, these will not be undone, that we are ready to move on.”
He did not elaborate on possible steps or indicate how the group, which has already implemented 20 years of benefits curtailing policies for the rights of girls and women, may have a change of heart.
The Taliban on Saturday ordered women to cover their faces in public, a return to the signature policy of their previous hardline regime and increasing sanctions that has sparked anger at home and abroad.
Referring to the mandatory clothing for women in public during the previous 1996-2001 regime of the Taliban, the group said the ideal face covering was the blue burqa.
The international community has made girls’ education a key demand for future recognition of the Taliban administration, which occupied the country in August as foreign forces withdrew.
Despite this, the Taliban have banned girls and women from working and limited their travel unless they were accompanied by a close male relative. Most of the girls were also barred from going to school after the seventh grade.
“We have discussed it closely with our partners and partners,” Price said. “There are steps we will continue to take to fulfill the promises they made, to increase pressure on the Taliban to reverse some of these decisions.”
The administration has said a significant portion of the leverage Washington held on the group is $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US soil – half of which the Biden administration wants to free up to help the Afghan people.
The United States and other countries have already cut development aid and sanctioned the banking system as the group pushed Afghanistan to economic ruin.
US Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West expressed “deep concern” over Saturday’s decision in a series of tweets, while US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said it was a “unconscious” move.
Most women in Afghanistan wear scarves for religious reasons, but in urban areas such as Kabul, many women do not cover their faces.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)