Taliban cannot win this time because ‘Afghanistan has changed, we as women have changed,’ she says
Despite all that her country is going through, how women like her have seen their rights suddenly erased since the Taliban takeover, Mahbouba Seraj is remarkably cheerful. That’s because the godmother of Afghanistan’s women’s-rights movement believes the Taliban can’t win this time.
The situation, she acknowledges with a defiant smile, is horribly grim at the moment. The country’s economy is collapsing, and an enormous humanitarian disaster looms. The return of the Taliban has meant the restoration of their segregationist rules, with girls only going to school until Grade 6, and professional women told to stay at home.
Similar laws were imposed upon Afghanistan’s women the last time the Islamic extremists held power, between 1996 and 2001. But the 73-year-old Ms. Seraj believes they won’t stick this time. She says the country, and its women, are very different from 20 years ago – even if the Taliban’s mindset remains the same.
“The most important thing is not [whether] the Taliban has changed, but that Afghanistan has changed. We as women have changed. We are not the same people who were so scared because somebody beat us on the head,” Ms. Seraj said in an interview at her Kabul home, which also doubles as the office of the Afghan Women’s Network she founded.
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