Taliban will protect women’s rights, claims Afghan entrepreneur

Islamabad : An Afghan businessperson and social worker Hassina Syed expressed her optimism about the Taliban to protect women’s rights in Afghanistan “because their leadership had reiterated so.”

Ms Syed was speaking at a webinar at the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) here Wednesday.

Ms Syed mentioned Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as “models of Islamic countries” for Taliban to walk into their footprint while making their policies with regard to women. She urged the Afghan women to observe the cultural norms of Afghanistan. She claimed that if the very few privileged women of Afghanistan with education would start to challenge the Taliban by flaunting their rules, it could prompt the Taliban rank and file to react. Such a situation, she argued, would neither be in the best interest of the Afghan women nor Afghanistan.

She said that if women would go out in the streets without covering their heads, it would provoke the Taliban. When asked about the UN report on evidence of abuse of women at the hands of the Taliban, Ms Syed justified by saying that the situation in Kabul was not completely under control and “non-Taliban armed groups could be posing as Taliban” to harass women. She claimed that she was in touch with the women in Afghanistan who were telling her that the Taliban had not imposed the sort of restrictions on them that they feared.

She urged the people of Afghanistan not to go back to the same people who had destroyed their country. “I blame the corrupt politicians of Afghanistan and their foreign backers for bringing Afghanistan to where it is now,” she opined.

Ms Syed also urged the international community to help Afghanistan economically. She shared that the banks were closed and the people of Afghanistan were really suffering because of it.