International

In Photos: Afghan Women’s Lives Reclaimed By Taliban Control

Since the Taliban's takeover in August 2021, Afghan women and girls have faced severe regression in their rights and freedoms, reverting to the pre-2002 era. The advances made over the past two decades have been swiftly undone, with women banned from education, employment, and public spaces. Restricted to their homes and subjected to a stringent dress code, they live under constant threat and surveillance

Photo by Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Women and girls wait in a corridor in the district hospital of Shindand, a district among those most affected by the two decades of war, located in the province of Herat, Western Afghanistan, May 30, 2023.

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Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images
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Woman in a burqa walking past a wall with different sorts of landmines and other weapons drawn on it in Kabul.

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Photo by Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images
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Demonstrators in support of women of Afghanistan hold a banner during the march of the International Women's Day on March 08, 2023 in Madrid, Spain.

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Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images
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Women, many of them widows, queue to receive food aid from Care International, in Kabul. Afghanistan.

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Photo by Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post via Getty Images
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A woman steps onto a bus leading her to a camp set up for returnees who have been deported or coerced into leaving Pakistan, at the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province, Eastern Afghanistan, on November 9, 2023. In 2021, over 600,000 Afghanis fled to Pakistan after the Taliban takeover and in November 2023, Pakistan coerced many of these Afghan refugees to return, saying the deportation drive was long overdue.

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Photo by Aref Karimi/Getty Images
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Protesters demonstrate outside the Foreign Ministry against the Taliban two years since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan on August 15, 2023 in Berlin, Germany.

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Photo by Matteo Nardone/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
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Protest in Piazza Esquilino organised by Afghan community and Nawroz Association to protest against the violation of women's rights and against the genocide of the Hazara people in Afghanistan.

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Photo by Morse Collection/Gado/Getty Images
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Three women in colorful burkas with covered faces walk down a street, their crisp modern slacks and Western style high heel shoes peeking out from underneath, in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 1973.

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Photo by © Jason Florio/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
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In a school for refugee children decades before the Taliban rule.

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Photo by Keystone/Getty Images
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Female workers join the men on a march in Kabul in July 1979.

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Photo by Zh. Angelov/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Female students at the Polytechnical University in Kabul before the Taliban days.