What Is Life Really Like Under the Taliban? We Asked Afghan Women. — The Diplomat

“Don’t believe what the media tells you about Afghanistan.” That’s the line turning up on TikTok and Instagram five years after U.S. and NATO forces withdrew and the Afghan Republic collapsed. Travel influencers – even women – are touring bustling Kabul markets and showcasing pristine mountain valleys, telling their audiences that the world has gotten Afghanistan all wrong. To the Taliban authorities, these foreign tourists are a PR goldmine – a chance to show the world that Afghanistan is safe, stable, and open for business. What the media reports about Afghanistan is, indeed, bleak. Since September 2021 Afghan girls have not been allowed to attend school beyond the 6th grade. Women have been pushed out of most professional jobs, including in government offices and non-governmental organizations. In December 2022, mere months after thousands of women sat for university entrance exams, the Taliban issued an indefinite ban on women studying at all public and private universities. And then in August 2024, the Taliban formally enacted a sweeping 114-page “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” law. The law introduced strict rules requiring women to completely cover their faces in public and forbidding their voices from being heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud outside the home. Meanwhile, the U.N. reports that three out of four Afghans — roughly 28 million people —…