Who is going to save Afghan women and their children now?

The condition of Afghan women and children today is dire. Besides restrictions on mobility and employment, Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are formally excluded from secondary and higher education.

The repressive attitude of the Taliban was once turned into a justification for the "just war" in Afghanistan. In her November 2001 radio address, Laura Bush, America's first lady then, had explicitly invoked the suffering of Afghan women and children and linked the fight against terrorism to the struggle for women's rights. Conversely, Lila Abu-Lughod challenged the Western tendency to portray Muslim women as victims in need of rescue, arguing that this framing obscures the broader historical and geopolitical maneuverings behind the Taliban's rise. Gayatri Spivak's famous assertion that "white men are saving brown women from brown men" also aptly captures the enduring colonial pattern of invoking women's oppression to justify foreign intervention and exploitation.

After two decades of war, the US found an exit from Afghanistan by negotiating directly with the Taliban, bypassing the Afghan government and generating considerable concern among civil-society organisations operating in the country. Once the Afghan state collapsed and the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, the international community refused to recognise them. Western governments have also been vocal in their condemnation of the Taliban for breaking its promises on women's education, but they have been unable to convince or compel the regime to change course.

Five years on, UN Women reports that more than half of surveyed Afghan women are now leaving their homes only once or twice a month, reflecting severe restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to public spaces. Afghanistan already had one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates, and a healthcare system which remained heavily dependent on international support. The situation has worsened with a shortage of female health workers, particularly given the restrictions women face in accessing care from male health professionals. The Taliban's December 2024 ban on women's medical training, including nursing and midwifery, further threatens the supply of female healthcare professionals and access to essential care.

Despite refusing to recognise the Taliban regime and freezing billions of dollars in Afghan central-bank reserves held abroad, the US had remained the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance to the country even after its military pullout. This situation has changed dramatically since President Trump's return to office this past year. Major aid cuts have led to a drastic disruption of humanitarian programmes, which has serious consequences for ordinary Afghans, especially women and children.

However, the Taliban's grip on power remains firm. Many neighbouring countries are increasingly approaching Kabul through the lens of their own strategic interests, despite the repressive attitude of the emergent Taliban regime.

Afghan women were once presented as a central reason why US-led NATO forces fought a war in Afghanistan. Their suffering helped give the war a moral vocabulary beyond seeking retribution for 9/11. But when the war became too costly and strategically inconvenient, that concern did not prevent the international community from leaving.

Afghan women do not need to be reduced to passive victims waiting for another foreign power to save them. But securing their rights requires sustained international pressure and support. The tragedy of Afghanistan is not simply that the Taliban returned. It is that women whose liberation was once invoked as a justification for war are now being left to endure the consequences of its aftermath largely on their own.