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Afghanistan’s Women: Erased

An entire generation of Afghan girls have had their aspirations suspended by policies systematically excluding them from education and public life.

Neelab Noori was 13 years old when the Taliban walked into Kabul. The first thing she noticed was the silence where her school used to be. 

“Soon after the takeover, the first thing they did was close schools,” she said. She had been in eighth grade, attending both school and an academy, the kind of girl who had carefully mapped her bright future out in classrooms. That future dimmed overnight.

She waited two years. Then, in June 2023, her family left Afghanistan for Pakistan.

“A girl cannot fulfil her dreams there,” she said simply. “Colleges and universities for girls are closed. Only school until sixth grade is allowed. So we left.”

She is 17 now, speaking from Pakistan, where documentation issues have again stalled her education. 

“Sometimes I feel pissed,” she said, with the directness of someone who has run out of patience for diplomatic language. “If I can’t continue education here either, what’s the point of living here? In those times, I think about returning to Afghanistan.”

She paused. “But I know what’s there.”

Far from being an exceptional case, Neelab’s story reflects the lived reality of an entire generation of Afghan girls whose aspirations have been suspended by policies systematically excluding them from education, public life, and the possibility of shaping their own futures. 

A Government No One Chose

Four years after their forces swept into Kabul, the Taliban govern a nation of 40 million people who were never consulted about the takeover. Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, rules from Kandahar by religious decree. He has never faced a vote and likely never will.

The last elected Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, fled Kabul before the Taliban’s forces arrived in August 2021.

The Bertelsmann Transformation Index’s 2026 Afghanistan report found that all channels of public participation in governance are “de facto paralyzed,” with no elections, no jirgas, and no meaningful public consultations. The Taliban’s theological answer is that God guides the deserving ruler.

Most Afghans were not consulted on this theology either.

The composition of the government reflects its origins. The Middle East Institute’s Taliban Leadership Tracker, which maps over 1,200 senior and mid-level figures as of late 2025, found that 90 percent are ethnic Pashtuns. Hazaras, who comprise roughly 20 percent of the country’s population, and who have faced the Taliban’s most violent persecution in the past, hold just 0.7 percent of leadership positions. Not a single woman sits in the cabinet, nor in any local government office anywhere in the country.

Imtiaz Baloch, a researcher tracking political and security developments across the region, is precise about what this means: The Tabliban “do not fully represent Afghanistan’s diverse population,” he said. “Their support mainly comes from rural communities, while many urban residents, women, and ethnic minorities remain excluded. Governance is centralized and ideological, with little inclusivity, which is making it hard for the system to gain wider legitimacy.”

An Afghan scholar now living in Germany, who asked not to be named, went further. 

“This regime is a gift from regional and international players,” the scholar said. “Now it is a prison for its own people, and even more so for women, who face the harshest restrictions and oppression.”

Since 2021, the Taliban have issued more than 80 edicts targeting women’s rights, according to U.N. Women. Girls are banned from education above the sixth grade, leaving 2.2 million........

© The Diplomat