Afghan Women-Led Resistance is Alive and Well

On September 4, 2021, a protest of 100 Afghan women swarmed the streets outside the newly Taliban-occupied presidential palace in Kabul, carrying signs that read “azadi” (freedom). These women were challenging the Taliban’s recent decision to expel women from participating in parliament, and in doing so reminding the world that Afghan women-led resistance efforts exist and have never been weak or in need of saving.

Although Kabul, and with it, Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, the struggle for women’s rights continues in the country. Mahbouba Seraj, the founder of the Afghan Women’s Network, declared to CBC that if anyone thinks “for one second that we are not going to raise our voices — we are not going to ask for our rights, we are not going to stand for what belongs to us to be ours — then that's when they are wrong.” Even during U.S. troop-withdrawal and evacuation efforts of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable, Seraj chose to remain in Afghanistan; she opposes the Western savior complex that assumes as a woman, she requires rescue.

Afghan women fought oppression within their own country long before U.S. occupation. In 1977, Meena Keshwar –– feminist, activist, revolutionary –– established RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. As the country’s first organized defense for women’s rights, RAWA established orphanages, schools, nursing courses, and handicraft centers for Afghan women and female refugees. Even though RAWA initiatives were prohibited by Taliban rule during the 1990s, they continued to resist and pave the way for female social and political representation. Keshwar and RAWA represent the desperate need for a “liberation from within” in Afghanistan.

The United States has historically failed to acknowledge the capabilities of local women-led resistance efforts and attempted to become the “Western Hero.” One humanitarian justification of Bush’s war on terror and Afghanistan invasion of 2001 was women’s rights. In then-First Lady Laura Bush’s November 2001 radio address to the American public, she declared, “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” She concluded the speech with the hope that “Americans will join our family in working to ensure that dignity and opportunity will be secured for all the women and children of Afghanistan.”

Bush’s generalization of terrorism dehumanized Afghan resistance and failed to acknowledge the presence of Afghan feminist movements. Her language of imperial Western feminism damaged real progress because Afghan women were painted as “weak” and in need of saving.

Even though current realities for women in Taliban-held Afghanistan are grim, Afghan women once again spearhead efforts of resistance. Shabana Basij-Rasikh actively fights for the right to educate young girls in Afghanistan. As the founder of SOLA, the first and only girls’ boarding school in Afghanistan, Basij-Rasikh recruits students from 28 of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Many students attend for free. Unfortunately, the graduation of the first cohort of girls, who matriculated in 2016, has been canceled by the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. However, SOLA still works to protect its students from persecution by the Taliban. They have burned all of the school records to hide the identity of students. Many girls have also been sent to Rwanda for a study-abroad semester, and 42 students have been transferred to boarding schools around the United States. At SOLA’s new Kigali campus, the school plans to fill spots with female Afghan refugees. Even under Taliban rule, Basij-Rasikh continues to provide education to her students. She serves as an example of centering Afghanistan-driven efforts for women’s rights and the effectiveness of local resistance.

Afghan women-led resistance efforts are the key to preventing Taliban oppression. In reality, Afghan women have a history of fierce feminism, and they are once again in the process of determining the future for women. Afghan resistance is on the rise, and this wave of female power has the potential to spark new feminist movements. It is time international actors support Afghan women in their own campaigns of resistance.