Afghan Women Worry Their Rights Will Be a Bartering Tool at Talks With the Taliban by J.P. Lawrence – Stars & Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan women fear their hard-won rights could be bargained away when government negotiators meet with the Taliban to map out the future of the country, female students at an American-backed university said Sunday.
Although many of those gathered at the American University of Afghanistan to celebrate International Women’s Day were too young to have experienced the terror inflicted on women by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, they knew they wanted to keep the rights women have gained since the Taliban were ousted by the U.S.-led coalition more than 18 years ago.
“(The Taliban) have to deal with the fact that women today are not the women they dealt with during the 1990s,” Kamila Azizi, 18, said in English. “They will have to make an adjustment."
Azizi exemplifies the gains Afghan women have made since the Taliban were forced from power. When she begins business studies at a local college, she will be one of more than 100,000 Afghan women who attend university — something denied them under the Taliban…