The Facts
Ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada issued a public statement saying that Taliban rule has made Afghan women "free and dignified," while taking steps to guarantee Afghan women a "comfortable and prosperous life according to Islamic Sharia."
While the UN last week expressed "deep concern" over the disenfranchisement of women under Taliban rule, Akhunzada has said the government is working "for the betterment of women."
The Spin
Narrative A
These remarks from an extremist theocrat are a slap in the face to the women of Afghanistan, who have had their rights rolled back startlingly. Despite promises to be less extreme than previous iterations of the Taliban, the ruling government has increasingly erased women from every domain of public life. These comments are a transparent attempt to try and rehabilitate the image of the Taliban and garner international legitimacy, which no nation has so far fallen for.
Narrative B
Every nation has the right to govern itself under a system accepted by the population. It was the destructive foreign intervention, not the Taliban, that forced the nation into such dire straits. The oppression that women face is pre-Islamic cultural prejudices, and it is the Taliban that is devoted to eradicating them. Instead of attacking a nation amid a humanitarian crisis, the world would do well to account for the indignities they continue to inflict on the people of Afghanistan.
