Afghan Women under the tyranny of the misogynist fundamentalists


Medieval restrictions imposed by Taliban on Afghan women since Aug.2021

An overview on the situation of Afghan Women
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Some of the restrictions imposed by Taliban on women (1996-2001)
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Afghan women in chains of the brutal fundamentalists
  • May 6, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    ‘US air-raid kills over 100 civilians in Farah’
    PAN: Residents of the Bala Boluk district in western Farah province on Tuesday claimed more than one hundred 'innocent people' have been killed in the Monday's air offensive by the US forces. The air-strike in Bala Boluk district came after an insurgent attack on a police check post that killed six people and three others on spy charges on Sunday.      Full news...

  • April 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Father kills daughter, her paramour in Baghlan
    PAN: A father murdered his daughter and her paramour for their alleged involvement in an adulterous affair in the Timoryan village of Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province on Tuesday night. The boy of age 23 and the girl, 25, was cousins. Dr. Khalil Naramgo, head of the district hospital said bodies of the two have been brought to the hospital. He claimed after the postmortem report it was learnt that the couple did not have sexual relations.      Full news...

  • April 26, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Three dozen girl students were poisoned in Afghanistan
    Xinhua: Three dozen girl students were poisoned in Parwan province 70 km north of Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, Ahmad Farid Rahid a spokesman of Public Health Ministry said. "There was a ceremony at the compound of Sadiqi Padshah Girl School in Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, today and suddenly 36 students, one police and one teacher got unconscious, all of whom were taken to hospital," Rahid told Xinhua.      Full news...

  • April 26, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Girl school burned down in NW Afghanistan
    Xinhua: Unknown armed men set fire on a girl school in Ghor province, in northwestern Afghanistan, a local newspaper reported Sunday. "Unidentified men dynamited a girl school in Tiwara district Friday night and destroyed it," a security official was quoted by the daily Arman-e-Millie. The report put the attack on Taliban militants, but the outfit has yet to claim responsibility.      Full news...

  • April 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Five million children not in school
    IRIN: Razia, aged 10, cannot go to school because doing so is deemed too risky for girls in the southern province of Kandahar, and because her father believes only boys should attend school. “My father says schools are not for girls and that girls should work at home,” she told IRIN in Kandahar, adding that she had always wanted to go to school and become a doctor.      Full news...

  • April 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Insurgency Averts 200,000 Afghan Kids from Schooling: UN
    Quqnoos: According to UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF in Kabul, 66 per cent of Afghans are illiterate but the figure is remarkably higher for women, nearly 90 per cent. UNICEF estimates that more than 80 per cent of females and around 50 per cent of males lack accessing to education centres, mostly in the rural areas of the country. UNESCO Director for Afghanistan, Shigeru Ayoagi, marked this country with a highest rate of illiteracy in the world.      Full news...

  • April 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    America’s Imperialism: We need to see the horrors
    Spero News: Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.      Full news...

  • April 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Plight of Afghan women prompts fresh debate
    Globe and Mail: What started eight years ago as a military operation to deprive terrorists of a safe haven from which to launch attacks on the West morphed, in the eyes of many, into something much grander: an exercise in nation building and bolstering human rights. The hopes for an improvement in the lives of Afghanistan's women have been sorely challenged recently by a series of events, from the horrific acid attacks on schoolgirls in Kandahar and the targeted assassinations of female politicians and police, to what is seen as the ultimate betrayal: the Afghan government's endorsement of the family law bill that appears to legalize rape in marriage.      Full news...

  • April 16, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan Women Protest Marital Rape Law; Men Spit and Stone Them
    OpEdNews: Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the "Shia Family Law" which legitimates marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).      Full news...

  • April 16, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Drug Addiction, and Misery, Increase In Afghanistan
    NPR: A growing number of Afghans — including children — are escaping the pain of war and poverty by using opium or heroin, for as little as a dollar a day. A United Nations survey begun this month is widely expected to show that at least 1 in 12 people in Afghanistan abuses drugs — double the number in the last survey four years ago. Experts say that the alarming trend is not being addressed by the Afghan government and its international partners, even though most officials acknowledge that the drug scourge threatens lasting stability in Afghanistan.      Full news...

  • April 15, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Angry Afghans protest over new marriage law
    Associated Press: A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart. The law, passed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse — a clause that critics say legalizes marital rape. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone.      Full news...

  • April 14, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    A voice of hope for Afghanistan’s women
    The Age: FOR the women of Afghanistan, it is yet another brutal message — that death awaits those who choose a public life... Malalai Joya understands better than most the oppression of Afghan women — and the danger of speaking out. The women's rights activist and member of Afghanistan's national parliament has lived in hiding for five years and never spends more than 24 hours at the same house.      Full news...

  • April 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    NATO operation killed six civilians in Kunar province of Afghanistan
    The Associated Press: A NATO operation killed six civilians Monday, including a woman and a young girl, in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, villagers and officials said. But the military alliance said its force killed four to eight "militants." The governor of Kunar province, Sayed Fazelullah Wahidi, said four men also died in the NATO air strikes. Five houses were damaged, and one was demolished, Wahidi and villagers said.      Full news...

  • April 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Taliban publicly executed a man and girl for eloping
    Reuters: Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan. Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.      Full news...

  • April 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Taliban slain Afghan women’s rights activist
    Toronto Star: A female provincial official known for fighting for women's rights was gunned down in southern Afghanistan yesterday... Gunmen killed Sitara Achakzai outside her home in Kandahar city and then drove off, said Matiullah Khan Qateh, police chief of Kandahar province. He said the four men drove up on two motorcycles and shot Achakzai as she was getting out of her car.      Full news...

  • April 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Sharia for Shias: ‘Legalised rape’
    Times Online: Tom Coghlan, reporting for The Times in Kabul, has been leaked the full text of new laws in Afghanistan, under which a woman from the minority Shia community will not be able to leave the house without her husband's permission and cannot refuse him his marital rights. 'The wife is bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires,' the law says. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the new law legalises the rape of a woman by her husband.      Full news...


  • April 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Radicals beat girl, 17, in Islamic stronghold of Swat, Pakistan
    Times online: This grainy footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Islamic radicals in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat, where Sharia law was introduced after the government reached a truce with the Taleban in February.A local Taleban commander in the militant stronghold of Matta, 25 miles from the regional capital, Mingora, ordered the girl to be flogged a week ago after accusing her of adultery, according to local reporters.      Full news...

  • March 31, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Food aid not reaching most vulnerable women, children in Afghanistan
    IRIN: Despite a July 2008 joint emergency appeal for US$404 million to help the most vulnerable 550,000 pregnant and lactating women and under-five children in Afghanistan, nutritious food aid - specially fortified food -is yet to reach those in need. Some 24 percent of lactating women are malnourished, over 19 percent of pregnant women have a poor nutritional status (low on minerals, vitamins, food insecure and weak) and about 54 percent of under-five children are stunted, according to a joint survey by UN agencies and the government.      Full news...

  • March 31, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan leader accused of bid to ‘legalise rape’
    The Independent: Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.      Full news...

  • March 31, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    ‘Worse than the Taliban’ - new law rolls back rights for Afghan women
    The Guardian: Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.      Full news...

  • March 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Husband decapitate wife in Juzjan province of Afghanistan
    PAN: A Husband decapitated his wife and a police officer was detained in a case of embezzling 1.4 million afghanis in northern Jozjan province.Colonel Syed Abbas Sadat, crime branch chief of Jozjan police told Pajhwok Afghan News that Abdul Razaq, 22, killed his 18 years old wife with knife in Khawja Do Koh district on Sunday night.      Full news...

  • March 26, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan hospital records 600 suicide attempts within a year
    Quqnoos: An Afghan emergency hospital records 600 suicide attempts within a year. This is an enormous number of Afghans, mainly women, trying to commit suicide to flee violence in life. Based on the figures given by the Ibn-e Sina Emergency Hospital in Kabul more than 600 incidents of suicide attempts have been referred to this hospital during the past 12 months.      Full news...

  • March 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    An Afghan woman commits self-immolation in Herat
    RAWA News: A 27 years old Afghan woman committed self-immolation and died in Pushtoon Zarghon district of Herat province in Western Afghanistan on Monday, March 16. Local officials confirmed the incident and say apparently she had committed self-immolation due to domestic violence. They say an investigation has been started.      Full news...

  • March 15, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Battle lines drawn over contraception
    IRIN: There are indications that some Taliban groups fervently oppose the use of contraceptives and may start using the issue as a pretext to launch further attacks on health centres, experts say. A pro-Taliban religious leader spoke for almost an hour against the use of contraceptive drugs, calling them “illicit and non-Islamic”. “Birth gaps have positive impacts on a mother’s health and the practice is in compliance with Sharia [Islamic] law so we will continue to recommend it,” Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for MoPH, told IRIN.      Full news...

  • March 11, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan: Terror, U.S. style
    Frontline: “Nothing has changed for us in this new Afghanistan,” said 16-year-old Seema, in early 2007, whose father was killed by a U.S. “liberating” bomb in October 2001. IN a widely quoted recent interview (on the National Public Radio network), Sarah Chayes proclaims, “Taliban Terrorising Afghanistan”. Afghanistan’s problems, Sarah Chayes implies that Afghanistan’s troubles call for military solutions.4 Give birth to “human rights” and electoral democracy with U.S. precision bombs and Special Forces.      Full news...

  • March 8, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    In Afghanistan 8th March celebrated with self-immolation
    BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): At the threshold of International Women’s Day, Afghan officials give the news of self-immolation in eastern Afghanistan. According to the local officials of Herat province, a 45-year-old woman committed self-immolation due to ‘poverty and mental pressures’.      Full news...

  • March 5, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    UN High Commissioner alarmed at worsening human rights situation in Afghanistan
    UNAMA: The High Commissioner noted that there has been a dramatic increase in threats and intimidation against women in public life or who work outside the home. Women working with government agencies, national and international organisations, journalists, police, and lawyers have all reported death-threat letters and phone calls. As a result, many women in public life have been forced to curtail their activities or abandon their jobs. The report calls for the protection of women and girls in both the private and public sphere and this must be translated into policies and concrete programmes.      Full news...

  • March 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Husband chops off wife’s ears in Ghor, western Afghanistan
    PAN: A furious husband, suspecting his wife of having illicit relations with another person, has reportedly cut off her ears in western Ghor province. Sherin Taj, 30, resident of Khoranj village of Charsadad district suffered the torture from her husband Abdul Qader on Monday night. Masuma Anawari, head of Women Affairs Department in the province told Pajhwok Afghan News Abdul Qader after badly beating his wife also cut off her ears and hairs with scissors.      Full news...


  • February 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Uncomfortable Others: Afghan Civilians Wounded by America
    RAWA News: If Afghan victims of American or NATO forces get mentioned at all in the mainstream press, it is the dead. Those permanently maimed in “precision” air strikes or midnight assaults by U.S. Special Forces hardly ever are worthy of notice. Yet, such attacks result in injured as well as wounded; indeed, the ratio of wounded to civilians killed in the predominant air attacks in Afghanistan during the initial U.S. bombing campaign was about 1.8 to 1. This ratio has likely decreased as the fighting became more lethally focused, but a decreasing ratio raises the specter of war crimes having been committed against civilians.      Full news...

  • February 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Thousands flee fighting and hunger in Afghanistan
    Amnesty International: Tens of thousands of Afghans displaced from their homes by escalating fighting and ongoing food shortages require immediate humanitarian assistance. Around 235,000 people are currently displaced in Afghanistan, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Most are displaced as a result of the fighting between government forces (and allied US and NATO troops) and armed opposition groups including the Taliban, particularly in the South, Southeast and Northwest regions of the country.      Full news...

  • February 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan Official Claims 15 Civilians Killed in US Strike in Herat
    IWPR: US forces in Afghanistan claim to have killed up to 15 militants associated with an infamous warlord in Herat province in an airstrike, but district officials and eyewitnesses say that the dead were a family of Kuchis, or nomads, who were camped out nearby. Ghulam Mahboob Afzalzada, district governor of Gozara, insisted the strike had claimed the lives of Kuchis, a nomadic people who shepherd their animals throughout the country. Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.      Full news...

  • February 16, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan diplomat Mohammed Fagirad charged in all-day wife beating in NY
    Daily News: An Afghan diplomat was charged Friday with beating his wife "like a dog" for more than 15 hours in their Queens home, prosecutors said. Mohammed Fagirad, 30, a vice consul at the Afghanistan Consulate, brutalized his wife inside their Flushing home from about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday until nearly midnight, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. During the attack, Fagirad bit, slapped, choked and beat the 22-year-old woman with a belt, pushed her down a flight of stairs and sat on her chest, prosecutors said.      Full news...

  • February 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Five Afghan Children One Woman Killed in Australian Raid in Uruzgan
    Reuters: Afghanistan condemned on Friday the killing of civilians in a raid by Australian soldiers in the south of the country which it says was not coordinated with Afghan forces. The Australian Defence Force said five children had been killed in a shootout between Taliban insurgents and Australian Special Forces in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, where they were "clearing" a number of compounds.      Full news...

  • February 12, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    16 self-immolation cases among Afghan women registered in Badghis
    PAN: 16 cases of self-immolation have been registered in Badghis province while the total numbers of cases of violence against women were 33 during last 11 months. Aqila, 18, mother of three children who married three years back said: "I was not happy with marriage, my father married me to a 40 year old man on 0.4 million afghanis, my husband was beating me up and my mother in law was insulting me without any reason"      Full news...

  • February 5, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Alia's husband poured acid on her face in Kunduz
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): A man poured acid on the face of his wife and she is in a critical condition in the Kunduz Hospital. This act was committed in the Fourth Region of Kunduz City last night by a teacher called Shakir Mohammad against his 26-year old wife, Alia. According to her information, Alia had not gone to Khan Abad with him and stayed in her father’s home. Her husband had entered and the splashed acid on her face the moment he faced her.      Full news...

  • February 3, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan: The Smell of Death
    CBN News: Every day in Afghanistan, women are committing suicide by setting themselves on fire. In a country where women are often oppressed, self immolation has become a common practice to escape family problems. And the cases of self immolation are growing at an alarming rate. "They burn themselves because they see no other option," said Dr. Zakia Fazel, an Afghan human rights advocate.      Full news...


  • January 27, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Anger and unrest continue over US raid in Laghman, Afghanistan
    Wikinews: January 15, a United States military strike in the Afghan province of Laghman killed 15 people, according to U.S. officials. The U.S claims only militants were killed, but on Saturday, village elders disputed that claim with the allegation that the casualties were all civilians. However, this version of events was contested when a statement from the Afghani president's office declared that 16 civilians were killed, not 15 militants. That statement also claimed that two women and three children were among the dead.      Full news...



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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)


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    Gang-rape of 12-y-old girl





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