In the three-plus years since the Taliban returned to power, women in Afghanistan have come through the various stages of grief to arrive at the point where many long-term hostages find themselves.
“They believe now the Taliban are good for them, that they are kept safe, that the best thing for them is to be locked in their homes, that everything is for their own good,” Batool Haidari, an Afghan psychologist, said. “The only way to describe what the women are suffering is Stockholm syndrome.”
From exile, Haidari has been helping women and girls deal with the Taliban’s war against their existence. She has steered many through disbelief, anger, and depression as their freedoms have been removed by decree. What she sees now is worse: acceptance.
In the months after the Taliban’s return, Haidari said, the girls and women she was in contact with “were full of despair, anger, and a demanding spirit.” After a few months, “I was shocked by how much they had changed. They now spoke calmly about how the Taliban had brought security. The girls themselves are now encouraging their peers to adhere to stricter dress codes, reminding each other to observe proper hijab and modesty. There is even competition over who can be more devout, wear more conservative clothing.”
“The only way to describe what the women are suffering is Stockholm syndrome.”
Few now participate in group discussions, “feeling they have no need.” They express contempt for the Afghan women who fled abroad for their lives, saying those who continue their protests, lobby Western governments for support, or go on hunger strike “only do such things to gain fame and tarnish the image of Islam,” she said.
“When I questioned them about no longer attending school or continuing their education, they would reply with statements like ‘We go to Quranic schools now. We’re happy. Not all knowledge is in universities. We don’t need to attend schools or universities and follow Western teachings and ideologies,’” Haidari said.
Haidari has witnessed the loss of control women have over their lives, as the Taliban have compounded the abuse by making men responsible for female compliance with the dozens of decrees on how they should behave. If the women do not follow the rules, the men face punishment, exacerbating the terrible stress and violence within the household.
She has counseled girls and women contemplating suicide and facing domestic violence; offered support to women who have been jailed without charge and beaten and raped by their captors. She has advised women on avoiding the sexual advances of male relatives, such as uncles and brothers-in-law. (Afghans generally live in compounds, of multiple generations, with sons bringing wives into the home.)
National governments and non-governmental agencies that purport to protect human rights and uphold international law have taken little action in response to the Taliban’s extreme cruelty to women. The terrorist-led group has tested the boundaries of its behavior and found that there are none. Billions of dollars of aid and cash flow into the country, theoretically for humanitarian relief, but much is pilfered by the Taliban.
This has emboldened Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has mocked Western outrage at the treatment of women and has doubled down on repression he justifies as Islamic law.
Perhaps accordingly, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced last week that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Taliban leaders who he said are “criminally responsible” for the persecution of girls, women, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people, and their supporters, in Afghanistan.
He named the “supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, and the chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, in a landmark case that has been built around the systemic abuses that have been investigated and documented since the group’s return.
A recent decree banned windows, so women cannot see or be seen outside the darkened rooms they’ve been forced into.
Women cannot go to school beyond age 12; they cannot play sports or go to parks, use public baths, sing, recite poetry, read the Quran aloud to other women, raise their voices in public, or use smartphones. They cannot go out without a male relative or guardian. They can barely work anywhere.
“It is almost impossible to grasp the horror that Afghanistan’s women are now living through,” Haidari said. A recent decree banned windows, so women cannot see or be seen outside the darkened rooms they’ve been forced into. They are, literally, imprisoned in their homes.
A decree on December 2 put an end to medical training for women, shutting them out of midwifery, radiology, dentistry, and other disciplines they could use to provide health care to other women. This comes on top of an existing ban on women seeing male health-care providers. The new rule is a “recipe for death,” said Heather Barr, head of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
Haidari saw it coming. Though she grew up outside Afghanistan, her relatives and friends lived through the Taliban’s first regime, five years of hell that only ended after the 9/11 atrocities in America in 2001, which were carried out by al-Qaeda with Taliban support. The United States invaded to get rid of them; the insurgency they launched soon after lasted until August 2021, when the republic collapsed, and the Taliban’s misogynistic reign of terror began anew.
An academic and sexologist specializing in pedophilia, Haidari escaped Afghanistan soon after the Taliban’s return. Her specialty is taboo in conservative Islamic societies and drew Taliban death threats even before they regained power.
She fled to Italy, where she “found refuge in a Protestant church that provided shelter to those in need.” Despite the persistent death threats, she felt far from the danger—until she received a photograph showing her hand in hand with her daughter outside the child’s school. “They had found me, and I no longer felt safe,” she said, as tears filled her eyes at the memory.
She channeled her energy into providing psychotherapy “to treat the traumas of women who were imprisoned by the Taliban or suffered physical and psychological harm from living under Taliban rule,” she said.
Haidari is well known in a country traumatized by more than 40 years of war and insurgency but lacking adequate psychological support. She made regular public and media appearances before the Taliban came back, and after she escaped, non-governmental mental-health organizations asked her to help those left behind.
NGOs and Western governments referred women and girls and provided money to cover their phone and Internet costs. Until recently, Haidari was counseling 100 women and girls from all ethnicities and regions. As restrictions have closed in, the number of referred patients has fallen to 30, and now Haidari works mostly, without pay, with women who come to her directly.
Her approach aligns with standard clinical psychological-treatment frameworks: understanding who her patients are and their living situation and conditions, and building trust; identifying the core issues and helping the women and girls to articulate their problems; treatment using online therapy.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced last week that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Taliban leaders who he said are “criminally responsible” for the persecution of girls, women, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people, and their supporters.
Treatment-according-to-need utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and mindfulness, Haidari said. “Sometimes I used all three.”
Haidari has worked closely with women brave enough to take their protests to the streets, many of whom have been imprisoned and tortured, or fled to neighboring countries. “Each of the protest leaders have their own groups and sometimes ask me to advise their members, in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I am at their service through all online platforms,” she said. Her contact groups grow exponentially, she says, as people she helps refer her to others in ever expanding concentric circles.
Afghanistan’s shattered economy and high unemployment mean Internet and Wi-Fi access is unaffordable for most households. “Women used to have their own cell phones, but now they rarely do, because families cannot afford to have more than one per household, or the men take control of the phones,” Haidari said. When Akhundzada said smartphones “were leading women astray,” the last door to help slammed shut.
“If women retain any control of the phone, it will be for very short periods, and they must delete all messages immediately,” she said. “I have less and less access to women who are in great need of psychological support, at a time when their situation is getting more desperate and they need it more than ever. But now they are believing they need it less and less.”
The work is necessary, as the damage is profound, but she recognizes the toll it takes on her own mental health.
“I mostly help young girls—from the protesting girls to girls who have dropped out of school or are in second and third marriages,” Haidari explained. “I am always ready to provide psychological help to all women and girls. At any time of the day or night. And this listening has made me sick. But I have to be resilient and always have a happy spirit and an active ear and be ready to listen and cooperate,” she said.
Lynne O’Donnell, an author, journalist, and broadcaster, specializes in South and Central Asian affairs, war, and terrorism
