Repeating the Past or Following Precedent? Contextualising the Taliban 2.0’s Governance of Women

Jan 12, 2023
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Also published in International Centre for Counter-Terrorism
Women and a child walk near Kabul, Afghanistan - source: Reuters
About the Authors
Gina Vale

Gina Vale is a lecturer of criminology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology at the University of Southampton.

Devorah Margolin
Devorah Margolin

Devorah Margolin is the Blumenstein-Rosenbloom Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.

Farkhondeh Akbari

Farkhondeh Akbari is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Gender, Peace and Security Centre at Monash University.

Articles & Testimony

A twenty-first-century return to the group’s past gender apartheid is a distinct possibility, potentially threatening Afghan women’s rights, the survival of vulnerable ethnic groups, and the country’s broader security and prosperity.

More than one year since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, what should we expect from the group’s governance? One way to contextualise its recent re-entrance into governance is to examine its past and the precedent set by two other violent Islamist groups that have attempted to govern territory: the Islamic State and Hamas. Although these three groups are distinct, all have adopted an explicitly “traditionalist” stance and faced the dilemma of being stuck between their ideology and the practical issues that arise from governing. This study explores these three case studies to provide a brief but nuanced understanding of how each group’s gendered ideology has manifested in its local context. It then uses primary and secondary sources to compare these groups across three critical areas: implementation of gendered policies, the utility of women to the group’s strategic objectives, and bids for local and external legitimacy. In doing so, the paper addresses important implications for scholars and practitioners in understanding the future direction of the Taliban 2.0 and the consequences for other governing violent Islamist groups...

Read the full study on the ICCT website.

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