Afghan Women under the tyranny of the misogynist fundamentalists


An overview on the situation of Afghan Women
[ Français ] [ Deutsch ] [ Italiano ] [ Português ]

Some of the restrictions imposed by Taliban on women
[Spanish] [Italian] [French] [German] [Japanese] [Dutch]


Self-immolation among Afghan Women (horrible photos)


Afghan woman, victim of terrible family violence     Victim of crime by husband     Domestic Violence against children    Self-immolations among Afghan women
Afghan women in chains of the brutal fundamentalists

  • July 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Childhood ends at 11 for some Afghan girls; for others, an education begins
    The Canadian Press: Girls as young as 11 are considered just old enough for a husband. Their parents collect lucrative $10,000 dowries from wealthy grooms-to-be, and these pre-teens are sent off to become housewives and start raising families. Last year 60 Kandahar girls sought to escape their fate through suicide, provincial officials say. Like Sher, many wound up as hospital burn victims after dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves ablaze.      more...

  • July 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email AFGHANISTAN: Food prices fuelling sex work in north
    IRIN News: High food prices, drought, unemployment and lack of socio-economic opportunities are pushing some women and young girls in northern Afghanistan into commercial sex work, women’s rights activists and several affected women told IRIN.      more...

  • July 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Taliban execute two Afghan women
    World News Australia: A spokesman for Ghazni's governor, said the women, dressed in blue burqas, were shot and killed on Saturday just outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan. He called the two "innocent local people." Taliban fighters told AP Television News the two were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to US soldiers and other foreign contractors at a US base in Ghazni city.      more...

  • July 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email High birth rate killing mothers, infants in Afghnaistan - UNFPA expert
    IRIN: Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia - 6.7 - which not only means the deaths of thousands of young mothers and infants every year but also poses long-term challenges, an expert of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) warned. “If the fertility rates are not reduced, Afghanistan’s population will more than double by 2050; from 47th most populous country, Afghanistan would become the 31st most populous country in the world,” Penumaka said.      more...

  • July 11, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Afghan government says 47 civilians killed when US bombed wedding party
    Times Online: An Afghan government investigation has concluded that 45 women and children and two men were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan last Sunday. The nine-man investigation team appointed by the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, found that only civilians were hit during the airstrike.      more...

  • July 6, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Women in Afghanistan: Deprived of basic necessities
    MeriNews: Afghanistan has the highest rate of violence against women in the world. According to the ministry of Women’s Affairs, Afghan women lack their primary necessities and are subject to extreme violence. Girls are usually married before their legal age. During the last six months more than 2000 cases of violence have been registered throughout the country. It is said that most cases of violence against women are not reported due to the traditional and cultural complexities.      more...

  • June 24, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Daily Payman: A father raped his 13-year old daughter in Herat. Gulabshah raped his daughter, 13-year old Freshta, after severely beating his wife and forcing her out of the house. Freshta says, “My father tied my feet and mouth and raped me after throwing my mother out of the house.”      more...

  • June 24, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    PAN: A young girl was raped in Raghistan district of Badakhshan province. 17-year old Razia claimed that 40-year old Altaf Al-Rahman had raped her several times three days back. She told PAN that she wanted justice and the punishment of the rapist but didn’t give any further details.      more...

  • June 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email AFGHANISTAN: Little support for victims of child sexual abuse
    IRIN News: Ten-year-old Sweeta still remembers the most painful moments of her life when a bulky 35-year-old man raped her in his office in the town of Sheberghan, Jowzjan Province, in northern Afghanistan. At around 10am on 31 January 2008 a vehicle with the markings and number plate of the Afghan National Army (ANA) stopped near a water-point where Sweeta was filling her buckets, according to AHRO.      more...

  • June 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Sex trade thrives in Afghanistan
    The Associated Press: The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs. The man paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex. Afghanistan is one of the world's most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serve both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don't exist.      more...

  • June 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Sun News: Paradise is a brothel in an unmarked residential compound in an upscale Kabul neighbourhood where prostitutes from China cater to Western men. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Westerners working for security firms, companies and aid groups have poured into Afghanistan. Not long after came Chinese prostitutes, in some cases trafficked into the country.      more...

  • June 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The Globe and Mail: Since the repressive Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001, Afghanistan, which has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, has vastly improved health-care services for mothers and their babies. However, in restive regions in southern Afghanistan, such as rural areas in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, many women say the situation has worsened.      more...

  • June 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Protesters in Kabul: Aid will not help Afghanistan when criminals are in power
    Hundreds of families of the war victims in a show off protest in front of the UN office called upon president Hamid Karzai and the UN to bring to justice those responsible for three decades long war in the country killing millions of innocent people. Referring to the Paris conference they said hundreds of millions of aid is poured into Afghanistan, but no considerable progress can be seen in the reconstruction of the country.      more...




  • June 6, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Afghanistan: why a withdrawal of troops
    On Line Opinion: The Afghan occupation is in its seventh year, and resistance to the occupation has not abated. According to the US National Intelligence director the US puppet regime of Hamid Karzai exerts control over no more than 30 per cent of the country. The situation for women has not improved since the US led invasion, in fact quite the contrary.      more...

  • June 4, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    PAN: A husband in Baghlan province, who had been married only for three nights, slaughtered his wife. Officer Abdul Hameed, the commander of the Security Police of the First District of Pulkhumri said that last midnight, Khwaja Farooq had cut his wife’s throat with a pair of scissors and when the police had arrived few hours later and surrounded his home, he had escaped.      more...

  • May 28, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    PAN: Not observing the pause between births, early marriages, not going to healthcare centers, being in contact with other diseases are the causes of increase in the number of women with tuberculosis in the country. According to the information of the Ministry of Public Health, last year about 40,000 women had this disease and about 8,500 of them died. 70% of the people with this disease were women.      more...

  • May 27, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Alarming Rise of Suicides Among Afghan Women
    VOA: Greater freedom for the women of Afghanistan was one of the promises of the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. U.S. and Afghan officials say there have been significant improvements, noting that some two million women and girls are now attending school, something that was forbidden under the extremist Taliban government. But despite Western efforts, many Afghan women say their lives have not improved significantly and an increasing number of women are committing suicide by burning themselves to death as a way to escape physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Mandy Clark reports from Kabul.      more...

  • May 22, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Afghan Man Dies of Hunger Along With his Wife
    PAN: 55-year old Gul Murad lived a life of poverty in the Zedori village with his wife Anar Gul and eight children. Gul Murad had not had food for four days and died. When the people were burying him his wife went unconscious. When she was being taken to the Mazar-e-Sharif Hospital for treatment, she died on the way. At first the people thought she had died of the sadness caused by her husband’s death but later found out that she too had not eaten anything for days and had died of hunger.      more...

  • May 22, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Driven to a Fiery Death — The Tragedy of Self-Immolation in Afghanistan
    The New England Journal of Medicine: Self-immolation is the act of burning oneself as a means of suicide. Although reliable data on the scope of this practice are difficult to obtain in Afghanistan and elsewhere, there are indications that self-immolation is occurring at a notable and steady rate. In 2004, in response to an apparent increase in cases of self-immolation in the country, the Afghan government, AIHRC, and the UNAMA undertook separate reviews of identified cases to try to determine why the practice was occurring.      more...

  • May 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Malalai suspension a setback for democracy: HRW
    PAN: An influential international rights watchdog Wednesday renewed its call for Afghan parliament to reinstate its outspoken member Malalai Joya, suspended a year ago. Human Rights Watch (HRW), hailing the youngest member of the Wolesi Jirga as a bold human rights activist, said the 29-year-old had publicly criticised warlords and drug barons in her country.      more...


  • May 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Reporters Without Borders: RWB calls on the authorities to do everything possible to protect women journalists, several of whom have been attacked or threatened since the start of the year. One, Niloufar Habibi, has continued to receive death threats since leaving hospital after being stabbed on 15 May in the northwestern city of Herat and has to change residence every day.      more...

  • May 19, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Canada silent as Afghanistan’s democracy stifled
    Rabble.ca: Malalai Joya has a low tolerance for high-level corruption among public figures, elected and appointed, and she’s never been shy about saying so. Viewed by some as courageous, others as foolhardy, in my view her outspoken criticism cannot constitute legitimate grounds for permanent expulsion, without due process and with no appeal procedure from Afghanistan's Parliament to which she was democratically elected by her people.      more...

  • May 19, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Reuters: When 19-year-old Fatima returned to her home in northern Afghanistan after years as a refugee in Iran, she struggled desperately to earn a living. She briefly found work with an NGO, before being let go, and then spent two months learning how to weave carpets, before the factory shut down and she was again out on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif.      more...

  • May 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    IRIN News: Sayed Ali (not his real name) said he sold his 11-year-old daughter, Rabia, for US$2,000 to a man in Sheberghan city, Jawzjan Province in northern Afghanistan to feed his wife and three younger children. With food prices in Afghanistan having soared over the past few months and the 40-year-old father unable to find work, he said he had no other choice but to sell his daughter to save his family from starvation.      more...

  • May 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Afghan Female journalist stabbed
    AFP: A FEMALE Afghani journalist was stabbed and wounded today, authorities said, a day after unknown men threatened to kill her unless she quit her job at a local television station. "A woman came to my home and asked for a glass of water. As I was to bring her water she stabbed me in abdomen," Ms Habibi said.      more...

  • May 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Toronto Star: Six years after the fall of the Taliban, the cocooning burqa hangs on, even in a liberated capital rushing headlong into modernity, as if leaping millennia in one breathless hurdle. Tradition, family pressures, shyness and a sense of personal security without violation – all are given as reasons for clutching still to the metres of billowing fabric that cascade from scalp to ankle.      more...

  • May 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The Independent: The city is awash with widows who have come with the same idea. It is one of Kabul's many problems, this influx of desperate humanity that has flooded the city with double, treble the people it ever housed before the Russian invasion in 1979. Three-quarters of Afghans are almost completely illiterate. Among widows, the proportion is much higher. Kabul is awash with street children, hundreds of thousands of them, scavenging through rubbish, selling plastic bags, repairing bicycles, labouring for shoe-makers, or asking for alms in return for sending unwelcome wafts of aromatic smoke from the tin cans they wave at likely-looking passers-by.      more...

  • May 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email Female Journalist beaten up in western Herat
    Aatash.org: Five unknown persons including a woman had entered her vehicle, beaten her up and warned her to death if she continues to appear on TV. She was attacked in Darb-e Malik locality of Herat city while she was on her way to office. The attackers were in black clothes.      more...



  • April 30, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Reuters: About 1,600 Afghan women die in childbirth out of every 100,000 live births. In some of the most remote areas, the death rate is as high as 6,500. In comparison, the average rate in developing countries is 450 and in developed countries it is 9. Virtually everyone in Afghanistan can recount a story about a relative dying in childbirth, often from minor complications that can be easily treated with proper medical care.      more...

  • April 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email U.N. says half of Afghan children not in school
    Reuters: Half of Afghan children are still not going to school and the biggest group missing out on an education are girls, the United Nations said on Monday."We still have 1.2 million girls of school age who do not have access to school in this country," Catherine Mbengue, head of UNICEF in Afghanistan, told the news conference.      more...



  • April 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    BBC: In northern Afghanistan it appears some parents are being driven by poverty and hunger to marry off their daughters at an early age. Jenny Cuffe investigates for Radio 4's Seven Days.      more...



1 2 3 4 Next >


Gulbar in a local hospital in Badghis province
Gulbar, an Afghan woman who was burnt by her husband in Nov.2005 (details...)

Muska a victim in so-called liberated Afghanistan
Muska, a female election worker who committed suicide after rape attempt on her in Jalalabad on Oct.9, 2004 (details...)
A woman victim of family violence
A true face of Afghan women today.
"There is a huge gap between the reality on the ground and the 'remarkable progress' claimed by western diplomats who sit in fortified compounds behind guards..." (Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times, November 5, 2006)

Women crying
Women wailing with grief as they are turned away from a funeral in Kabul in late 1994. AI
Those responsible for these killings are now in possession of power in Afghanistan and strongly supported by the US government.

An Afghan women
A woman with her child recounts how her husband was killed in Afshar, west of Kabul. Hundreds of innocent people from Hazara minority were massacred by forces of Sayyaf and Ahmad Shah Massoud in this area in 1993
Zarmeena is being excuted by Taliban
Public execution of an Afghan woman by Taliban in Kabul
Photos from a video film by RAWA (click here to view more photos and movie clips)

a victim
A victim of the fundamentalists brutalities against women
More photos


A woman who was gang-raped and then killed The Jehadi fundamentalists after gang-raping Shukria, killed her in cold-blood

Shukria d/o Ali Mardan was the mother of four children and lived in Kabul. She had a tailoring-shop. On May 22, 1993 she was on her way to Shahrara when suddenly a car braked to a halt and a group of armed-jehadi jumped out and dragged her to their car and in a minute disappeared. Her ill-fated family searched every where but in vain.... Till, after fifty-five days her blood-soaked semi-naked body was found in Khairkhana, Kabul.

Today again the Northern Alliance, the rapists and murderers of thousands of Shukrias have key positions in the new Afghan government.


Nahid killed on Feb.9, 1993 Naheed another victims of the Jehadi Fundamentalists

Thirteen-year-old Nahida Hassan became a symbol for Afghan women and girls who were raped during the two decades of war. [On Feb.9, 1993] when a commander and twenty of his troops broke into her Kabul apartment, killing her 12-year-old brother and gunning down her other male relatives, Nahida understood she was the target. To avoid being sexually savaged, she leapt from the sixth-floor window to her death. Today, there is a shrine on the spot where she fell. "Everyone knew who the commander was. But no one dared touch him," said the girl's 64-year-old grandfather, Mohammed Hassan. The commander enjoyed the protection of his party, whose fundamentalist cleric leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, headed the government at the time and, more recently, the Northern Alliance, which holds key positions in the new interim administration.

Jan Goodwin, The Nation, April 29, 2002


WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: A human rights catastrophe
(Amnesty International document, March 1995)







[Photo Gallery] [More reports from Afghanistan] [Home Page]