Women's Studies International Forum Dwelling in an all-male world: A critical analysis of the Taliban discourse on Afghan women

Table of contents :
Dwelling in an all-male world: A critical analysis of the Taliban discourse on Afghan women
Introduction
Theory and methodology
The evolution and domination of the Taliban discourse
Women’s status in post-2001 Afghanistan
The revival and dominance of the Taliban discourse
Shaky foundations of the Taliban discourse
Necropolitics and the Taliban governmentality
Conclusion
References

Citation preview

Women’s Studies International Forum 98 (2023) 102748

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Dwelling in an all-male world: A critical analysis of the Taliban discourse on Afghan women Pamir H. Sahill School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University, Letensk´ a 5, 118 00, Prague 1, Czech Republic

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Afghanistan Afghan women Taliban Political Islam Politics of confinement Necropolitics

This article critically assesses the Taliban discourse and its significant political and social ramifications for the women of Afghanistan. The militant group’s rise to power in August 2021 and its subsequent rule over Afghanistan has been extremely severe for women, relegated to the newly constructed spaces of confinement. By employing a Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis, the article shows that the Taliban discourse reg­ ulates and constrains women, their agency, and their political participation. This discourse, rooted in the shaky foundations of political Islam, is aimed at constructing an alternate form of political organization. The Taliban rule possesses necropolitical characteristics that are erasing women from public life and compelling them to look at the world from behind the veil, which, I argue, separates the real, material world from the imaginary and then combines them so that the living (objectified) subject evaporates into the realm of nothingness.

Introduction In mid-2021, the US-led international occupation of Afghanistan ended not with the country’s liberation, but with the imposition of a regime that completely subjugated and isolated the Afghans. The arrival of the Taliban militants in Kabul marked the fall of the short-lived re­ public (U.N. News, 2021; Latifi, 2021). With that, the men and women who were part of the government were quickly erased from the public sphere, being replaced by a Taliban government that monopolized the public discourse despite domestic resistance and international pressure. The Taliban were known for the harsh policies they imposed on women and minorities in 1996–2001. In response to the September 11, 2001 events, a US-led international coalition invaded the country and installed a government that allowed for increased women participation in public affairs. The Taliban continued to wage war against the alliance and the Afghan government. In 2020, President Donald Trump negoti­ ated a peace deal with the Taliban (Department of State, 2020) based on which the US-led international forces began withdrawing from Afghanistan. Trump also pushed for a political settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but the process remained sluggish and unproductive. As the Taliban launched an aggressive offensive in May 2021 (George et al., 2021), women’s political, economic, and social role began shrinking in areas under the group’s control. Responding to that, many young women also took up arms, ready to stop the Taliban’s advance (Graham-Harrison, 2021). This mobilization, unnoticed by the

media, showed defiance, resistance, and Afghan women’s agency at a time when the Taliban imposed their version of sharia (loosely translated as law) (Joscelyn, 2021). Despite promises to “commit to women rights within the confines of the sharia” (Spogmai Radio, 2022), the Taliban began their rule by targeting women bodies. They regulated and restrained women’s agency to prevent women’s political participation. This resembled their 1990s rule and contradicted the promises they had made during the negotia­ tions with the US between 2018 and 2020. The former US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, argued that the Taliban had become more moderate in their views about politics and society (Asey, 2021). He maintained this narrative despite the Taliban government’s exclusionary practices a month after its for­ mation (AlJazeera, 2021). Such misperceptions stem from an incom­ plete understanding of the foundations of the political discourse of the group. Unpacking the Taliban’s discourse is essential for understanding their governance and attitudes towards women. The Taliban have remained committed to the ideological discourse that underpins their devastating war politics before their seizure of Kabul. Preserving and implementing this discourse is their raison d’ˆetre and explains why their second rule has relegated the Afghan women to the depths of newly constructed “spaces of confinement” (Sahill, 2019), and ergo, is totali­ tarian. The use of body politics and dividing practices, I argue, are in­ tegral to Taliban’s governmentality because it helps them to build a

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102748 Received 27 December 2022; Received in revised form 29 April 2023; Accepted 2 May 2023 Available online 10 May 2023 0277-5395/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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peculiar kind of state through the discourse (and practice) of reverse state-building which involves silences, erasures, omissions, and sup­ pressions (Sahill, 2021). Any attempt to resist, challenge or thwart this final goal is eliminated through total domination and necropolitics (Mbembe, 2019). The Taliban rule is founded on the discourse of po­ litical Islam, which they consider sacred and divine. This discourse possesses the hallmark of necropower/necropolitics and has serious consequences for the society in general and particularly the Afghan women. Both Quran and the literature on it show how an Islamic society and state can be established and governed. Islam is a belief system as much as a political program. Contrary to those who describe the Taliban as a “religious,” “fundamentalist,” and “extremist” group (Ansari, 2018; Joya, 2009; Kakar, 2010; Osmani et al., 2020; Rashid, 2002; Saikal, 2018; Sultana, 2009), I argue that the Taliban and its discourse must be seen in political, not just religious, terms. The Taliban discourse, stem­ ming from Hanafi school and as part of the larger discourse of political Islam, focuses on establishing a distinct domestic political order ruled by Islamic law in Afghanistan. To critically analyze the Taliban discourse, I begin by briefly dis­ cussing my theoretical and methodological framework and then explain the discourse’s dominance during the 1990s, when strict restrictions imposed on women erased them from the public sphere. The next section critically analyzes the two decades of international occupation, when women increasingly participated in government while at the same time patriarchal discourses (and practices) prevented their political empow­ erment. Under the democratic government, few women participated in the negotiations with the Taliban. The article then examines the discourse of the post-2021 Taliban de facto government, shows that the core claims regarding women’s role in public life have remained un­ changed, and ties this discourse to political Islam. The Taliban draw on Hanafi Islamic legal and political thought to achieve their political goals, and to justify their theocracy. Through the politics of confinement and the use of necropower, the Taliban construct distinct spaces that seclude women from the society.

the discourse negates, suppresses, or refutes the presence of other dis­ courses, such approaches are needed to challenge shallow (or hollow) aspects of the hegemonic discourse and explain its ramifications. The timeframe for this analysis begins on September 7, 2021, the date when the Taliban announced its interim government (Government of the Taliban, 2021h), and ends on December 31, 2022. During this period the Taliban government laid out and imposed its discourse. Following Ditrych (2014), I selected hundreds of statements issued by Taliban spokespersons from a WhatsApp group for journalists which I joined on August 26, 2021. The Taliban government released 120 multimedia files (audios, videos, and images) and written statements that amounted to the equivalent of 200 pages of text (press releases, decrees, brief talks, as well as policy statements, remarks, and speeches of Taliban government members and the Supreme Leader). The gov­ ernment published most of these on its official websites and social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter). Over 97 % of the content was issued in Pashto and Dari, with the remainder in English and Arabic. I selected only texts in Pashto and only content relevant to women, which I translated into English. To ascertain the dissemination and dominance/marginality of the Taliban discourse (Hansen, 2006), I crosschecked all texts published in Afghanistan and the international media. I omitted texts that did not appear in the media, and media reports that were imprecise or not directly related to the Taliban’s communications. By referring to media sources I show the Taliban discourse’s widespread circulation, and dominance. The article greatly benefited from The Taliban Reader (van Linscho­ ten & Kuehn, 2018), a compilation of statements and decrees issued by the first Taliban government, and other texts for the comparative critical analysis of the Taliban discourse. While many authors are cited here, except Edwards (2002) and Rubin (2002), I disagree with their con­ clusions on an ontological and epistemological level because post­ positivist approaches question the universality of the Western realistidealist knowledge and its production. For example, some authors claim that the Taliban have “historical roots in Pashtun nationalist movements” (Leake, 2023, p. 21), the Pashtuns’ “resentment, anger and marginalization” against the “non-Pashtun government” in Kabul led to the emergence of the Taliban and their “policies of revenge” (Sharifi, 2018, p. 71), and that the Taliban “mobilized the Pashtuns,” while other leaders failed to do so (Sinno, 2008, p. 60). The (re)production of such claims regarding Afghanistan and Afghans have led to misconceptions about that state and society. Hence, I use these works as secondary sources to provide evidence, facts, and data/information only. The article has two limitations. First, it is concerned with the impact of the Taliban discourse on Afghan women. Without being physically present in Afghanistan, I cannot interpret the overall effect on the resi­ dents. Therefore, I rely on secondary data, and this is why this article does not analyze women’s resistance to Taliban rule. Their counterdiscourse thus remains marginalized. Second, the article does not offer an all-encompassing critical analysis of the Taliban discourse in its to­ tality but intentionally selects one aspect of it. The following section discusses the status of Afghan women before August 2021, which offers context to my assessment of the Taliban government’s past and present discourses, and its connection with po­ litical Islam.

Theory and methodology I use a Foucauldian-inspired conceptual approach and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Both focus on the construction and domi­ nance/marginality of a discourse, as well as the power dynamics and relations it entails (Fairclough, 2001; Hansen, 2006; Newman, 2005). This approach rejects essentialism, foundationalism, and the positivism of the discoverable existence of social reality, seeing it instead as con­ structed by complex power operations within historical periods and contexts. Since discourses are sites of politics and productive power (Foucault, 1991), ontology and epistemology are mutually constitutive. The way we observe the social world impacts our understanding of it (Foucault, 1981, p. 67; Neumann, 1999, p. 12; Sahill, 2021, p. 26). The CDA analyzes the text to derive meaning from it, but also critically en­ gages it by focusing on “social problems” and the “role of discourse in the production and reproduction of power abuse or domination” (van Dijk, 2001, p. 96). The CDA can play “an advocatory role for groups who suffer from social discrimination” (Meyer, 2001, p. 15). Thus, the discourse includes meaningful statements that entail power which manages, regulates, orders, (re)constructs and transforms social reality, subjects, and societies. With this Foucauldian-inspired CDA I critically evaluate the con­ struction, domination, and power effects of the Taliban discourse. My approach exposes the foundations of the discourse, reveals its circula­ tion in society, dominance and/or marginality, (re)interprets its nu­ ances, critically evaluates its inner tensions and contradictions, and identifies its implications by mapping the power it emanates. I see power as a multifaceted, multidirectional, (in)direct, and tacit flow within the social fabric. This approach elucidates the history of the discourse from an alternative standpoint, interprets it, and discusses its change. When

The evolution and domination of the Taliban discourse Originally, the Taliban were part of the internationally funded antiSoviet armed resistance groups collectively known as the mujahidin in the 1980s, but most of them laid down arms after the Red Army with­ drew from Afghanistan in 1989 (Zaeef, 2010, pp. 10 and 21–29; Sinno, 2008, p. 63). The Soviet-backed government collapsed in 1992, followed by a bloody civil war (Edwards, 2002; Tanner, 2002). By 1993, the mujahidin controlled some Afghan regions, but lawlessness and gross human rights violations prevailed (Gopal, 2014, pp. 59–67; Nojumi, 2

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2002, pp. 117–118). As such, a new “movement,” the Taliban, emerged in Kandahar in 1994 (Zaeef, 2010, p. 75; Coll, 2004, p. 209; Kakar, 2010, pp. 169–171). By 1995, the Taliban had established control over most of southern Afghanistan (Sinno, 2008, pp. 64–65). The Taliban’s success in restoring order, normalcy and calm in several provinces caught the attention of the US-led alliance and Pakistan also aided the Taliban (Rubin, 2002, pp. 12–13). The meetings between the American and the Taliban officials covered a wide range of political, economic, and social matters (National Security Archive, 2003). President Bill Clinton’s administration “was clearly sympathetic to the Taliban” and offered them funds “authorised” to “destabilise Iran,” believing that the group could protect their interests and stabilize Afghanistan (Rashid, 2002, p. 46). The US support for the Taliban did not last long due to the group’s harsh policies, treatment of women, human rights violations, and support for terrorists like Osama bin Laden (Rashid, 2002, pp. 65–66). In response, the Taliban claimed that their policies were based on the Islamic law and imposed their juridical au­ thority over several provinces. This marked the beginning of their discourse. In 1995, a Taliban leader told Islamic scholars and clerics brought to Kandahar that the niqab did not infringe women’s rights but rather “guaranteed the protection of a woman’s right and her dignity” (van Linschoten & Kuehn, 2018, p. 81). Later that year, a Taliban publication argued that Islam gave women the responsibility to take care of family and raise children because they “can do it better,” and that a woman was “not obliged” to leave the house and “work and earn” money (Ibid., p. 132). Hours after taking Kabul in 1996, the Taliban “imposed the strictest Islamic system” in the world, targeting women (Rashid, 2002, p. 50). Their directives banned women from leaving the household without a mahram (rightful male companion), made the wearing of hijab compulsory, and vowed to pay the salaries to women who had worked for the previous administration at home (van Linschoten & Kuehn, pp. 156–157). The Taliban-run Shariat daily refuted international criticism as baseless and explained that “in the context of human rights, education of women” is less important than “the protection of their honour and integrity,” adding that, issues like “security, peace and the elimination of corruption” have a “higher priority” than educating women (van Linschoten & Kuehn, 2018, p. 158). In the late 1990s, the Taliban defended their discourse about the implementation of Islamic sharia by claiming that their rule had “restored” women’s “safety, dignity and freedom” and the mandatory hijab was “fully consistent with the Islamic beliefs of Afghans and the traditions of Afghan society,” by accusing the previous government of having “forced a large number of women to serving government offices only for their amusement,” and by reiterating that the war and lack of financial resources prevented the Taliban to reopen girls’ schools (Ibid., pp. 216–217). As the Taliban banned girls from going to school and university, by late 1998 “nine in ten girls” were not in school (Rashid, 2002, p. 108). But some schools remained open. In the east and south­ east of Afghanistan, “the Swedish Committee supported some 600 pri­ mary schools with 150,000 students of whom 30,000 were girls” (Ibid., p. 110). Some girls’ schools operated with the Taliban’s tacit approval (Rashid, 2002, p. 110), and a number of girls and women received ed­ ucation in “underground” schools (Joya, 2009, pp. 38–46). The Taliban also removed women from the public sphere (Rubin, 2002, p. xvii). Eyewitness accounts and testimonials revealed the confinement of women, the strict exercise of juridical power, and the fear resulted from public punishments meted out against those who sinned against the sovereign and the “holy law” (Zoya et al., 2002; Rashid, 2002; Kakar, 2010, pp. 191–193; Cole, 2008, p. 129). Based on the orders of the Commander of the Faithful or the Supreme Leader (Amir ul-Mu’mineen), the Ministry of Guidance, the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Amr bil-Maroof wa Nahi An il-Munkar) became one of the most powerful state institutions (Kakar, 2010, p. 192). The building of the new state remained incomplete by 2001 and the Taliban repeatedly argued that the application of sharia continued

(Kakar, 2010). In late 2001, the US-led international coalition ousted the Taliban and imposed what it called was a liberal, pluralistic democratic system which lasted almost two decades. Despite the many loopholes, inner tensions, contradictions, and inconsistencies in the international state-building discourse, women’s political representation and partici­ pation in public life improved. The next section offers a critical analysis of the post-2001 women’s empowerment. Women’s status in post-2001 Afghanistan Women made notable gains after the US-led invasion of 2001. In all provinces, their participation in all branches of the government gradu­ ally improved thanks to their access to education. By 2021, women held 6.5 % of all ministerial positions, and 28 % of the lower House of the People (Wolesi Jirga) (Fox, 2021; Khadimi, 2022, p. 2; U.N. Women, 2021, p. 6). Article 83 of the 2004 constitution reserved at least 68 (27 %) of the 249-member deputy seats for women. Article 84 required the president to appoint one-third of the 102-member upper House of Elders (Meshrano Jirga), of whom at least 50 % (17 seats) had to be women (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, 2005). Before the Taliban’s 2021 takeover, “women constituted 29.6 percent of the civil service, with a significant presence in the cabinet, ambassadorships, deputy ministers, judges, prosecutors, professors and teachers” (U.N. Women, 2021, p. 7). A quota system ensured women’s numerical representation in Parliament, but not their participation in decision-making (Hrbkova & Fellegi, 2022). The patriarchal discourse continued to dominate the Afghan legislature after the first elections of 2005. The expulsion of outspoken legislator Malalai Joya for denouncing the overwhelming presence of warlords in Parliament (Joya, 2009), the rejection of the progressive Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women (Chaudhary et al., 2011, p. 107), and the approval of the controversial Shia Personal Status Law, which could legalize marital rape and other forms of violence against women (Boone, 2009), showed that women could not block decisions and policies negatively affecting their lives in the free and democratic Afghanistan. Afghan women occupied seats in the government but could not safeguard their rights or guarantee their political empowerment given the patriarchal political culture of postTaliban Afghanistan. International and local actors made no serious efforts to change political culture during those two decades (Sahill, 2021). After the Taliban’s fall in 2001 international partners funded the Afghan government but focused on state building and reforms of the security apparatus while disregarding grass-roots empowerment that would have enabled people to offer solutions to complex social prob­ lems. Contrary to what experts, scholars and organizations argue about democratization (Fukuyama, 2004; O.E.C.D., 2009; Sisk, 2013; Zoellick, 2009), a post-conflict society requires developing a political culture alongside simultaneously with building security, restoring law and order, and establishing institutions. Installing a new democratic gov­ ernment and (re)building institutions in countries with undemocratic political culture is like erecting skyscrapers in uninhabited land. The patronizing approach of the US and its allies coupled with Afghan leaders’ unwillingness to create political parties resulted in total dependence on international partners and donors. At the same time, the distance between Afghanistan’s long-neglected rural population and Kabul expanded (Gopal, 2021; Nojumi et al., 2009). Absence of political parties and of a democratic political culture had drastic consequences on women, leaving them powerless and marginalized. The US-Taliban negotiations leading to the peace deal were followed by an intra-Afghan dialogue that involved the government and the Doha-based Taliban but ignored the concerns of Afghan women who sought solid guarantees for respect of fundamental rights and women’s continued participation in the public sphere (O’Donnell, 2021). During the negotiations, the Taliban repeatedly vowed to ensure women’s rights in the context of Islamic sharia, but the government interlocutors 3

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sought no precise explanation how the Taliban would do that (Ale­ marah, 2021; Sultan, 2019). In fact, women’s and minority rights remained of secondary importance, and Afghan women were margin­ alized in the process. The 21-member team of the Afghan government which negotiated with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, included only five women. President Ashraf Ghani’s High Council for National Reconcili­ ation had only nine women among its 46 members (Allen & FelbabBrown, 2020). This does not mean that Afghan women were not in a better situation before the arrival of the Taliban, but that they were not politically empowered (Nojumi et al., 2009, pp. 83–102; Castillejo, 2013, p. 33), although “urban Afghan women middle- and upper-class families” had benefited “from the post-2001 order” (Allen & Felbab-Brown, 2020). Even in their case, the hegemony of the patriarchal discourse precluded women’s political empowerment and meaningful representation to in­ fluence government decision-making and negotiations with the Taliban. In the next section, I discuss the revival and hegemony of the Taliban discourse about women after 2021 and map its roots within the larger discourse of political Islam.

with corporal punishments after Logar in other provinces such as northern Takhar, including the most recent case in Kabul where “15 men and six women were publicly flogged” for several crimes including “illegal sexual relations (only heterosexual marriage is a legal relation­ ship), theft, eloping, consuming alcohol, and homosexuality” (The Su­ preme Court of the Taliban Government, 2022). In December 2022, the Taliban announced the first “public execu­ tion” of a man at a sports stadium in Farah province. He was accused of murder and theft and had been tried in the “highest Taliban courts” where he “confessed” to his crime, the government spokesperson Zabi­ hullah Mujahid said in a statement (Government of the Taliban, 2022g). Later that month, the Taliban higher education minister announced the government was suspending female university education indefinitely. The directive had come from the Taliban’s Supreme Leader and will remain in force until the establishment of an Islamic “sharia-based curriculum and an atmosphere” in accordance with the Afghan “cul­ ture”, minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem said on December 20 (Nadeem, 2022a). The measure was denounced both in Afghanistan and abroad, leading to protests from male and female students and resig­ nations of more than a dozen, mostly male, university professors. Western governments, the United Nations and the Organization of Is­ lamic Cooperation strongly condemned the ban (AlJazeera, 2022a), prompting the Taliban higher education minister to tweet that their government wants “pure Islam, not the one which Turkey, Saudi or others have” (Nadeem, 2022b). By the end of the year the Taliban government further tightened restrictions and barred women from working with non-governmental organizations (O.H.C.H.R., 2022) “until further notice” because “some” women had apparently “not adhered to the administration’s interpretation of the Islamic dress code for women,” the spokesperson of the ministry of economy said (AlJa­ zeera, 2022b). The application of the Taliban’s governmental discourse differs from the 1990s. The first marked difference is this time the imposition of the policy discourse has been rather step-by-step and gradual (U.N. Women, 2021). The execution of the Taliban discourse in the 1990s was largely uniform across the country, revealing a highly centralized form of governance. Any decree which the former Taliban Supreme Leader is­ sued was evenly and immediately enforced across Afghanistan (Rashid, 2002), albeit some exceptions which I briefly discussed earlier. Pres­ ently, the decrees and laws of the current Taliban government are implemented with a slower pace, gradually, and above all, with varied levels of intensity on provincial basis. Some orders, such as, the closure of all-girls secondary and high schools, have not been implemented in some provinces (U.N. Women, 2021, p. 5), especially in areas populated by ethnic and religious minorities. Also, instead of imposing the oldfashioned all-body burqa, the Taliban administration is content with hijab and has allowed women to wear different kinds of veil. Second, social and political contexts of the 1990s and the 21st cen­ tury Afghanistan are significantly different. The Taliban swiftly excluded women from public life in most of the urban areas after cata­ strophic civil war. The liberalization and relative stability after 2001 led to a considerable rise in private enterprises allowing women to play a more active role in the society. Presently, it is difficult for the Taliban to erase women from the private sector. Many women own or manage small and medium enterprises, continue employment at private sector and even several government departments (especially, health, educa­ tion, airports, and police etc.), work as journalists and presenters in dozens of private broadcasters, and leave home without a mahram. Third, while a passive and tacit resistance existed against the Taliban policies in the 1990s (seel, Joya, 2009; Rashid, 2002; and Zoya et al., 2002), this time it has been more open from women in different parts of Afghanistan despite brutal official response (V.O.A. Pashto, 2021; Azadi Radio, 2022b). Finally, this time the Taliban’s approach appears conciliatory in several areas including women rights. Top Taliban officials in meetings with international leaders reiterated that girls’ secondary and high

The revival and dominance of the Taliban discourse The Taliban announced their all-male “interim cabinet” three weeks after entering Kabul. Then, workers “replaced signs for the country’s women’s ministry with those for the Taliban’s moral police,” the Min­ istry of Guidance, and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Pal, 2021) despite women-led protests in several cities (Abbasi, 2021). Several decrees and policy statements consolidated the Taliban discourse which exclusively targets women and their agency. The Tali­ ban’s return to power threw women into an abyss, a gory space of confinement, where they were immediately stripped of many public roles. Thousands of female lawmakers, ministers, deputy ministers, di­ rectors, military officers, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, university and school teachers, researchers, health workers, journalists and activists fled the country, “tens of thousands of female civil servants were out of jobs across Afghanistan,” and hundreds of female judges went into hiding (Latifi & Haris, 2021). Within two weeks, women fell from a position of power to one of despair. The Taliban closed girls’ secondary and high schools in most provinces, and then hegemonized their discourse. They eliminated women affairs’ ministry, ordered the segregation of male and female students, introduced a dress code for female students, made hijab (body covering and headscarf) mandatory for women in the public, including female television presenters, restricted women movement, and fired hundreds of female civil servants so they would be replaced by their male relatives (Azadi Radio, 2022a; Azadi Radio, 2022c; Deutsche Welle Pashto, 2022; Gandhara, 2021; Government of the Taliban, 2021f; U.N. Women, 2021). More restrictions on women were gradually introduced. In November 2022, the Taliban prohibited women from going to parks and funfairs in Kabul, deeming them unsafe for them (Deutsche Welle Dari, 2022). The Taliban “also decimated institutions designed to address cases of domestic violence against women under the former government” (Amnesty International, 2022) thus making them further vulnerable to intimate partner violence (Shinwari et al., 2022). The Taliban reinstated public floggings and corporal and death punishments. Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Supreme Leader of the Tali­ ban, in a meeting with the judges ordered “implementing the hudud (the threshold beyond which one is penalized) and qisas (retaliation in kind) punishments in accordance with the sharia” (Government of the Tali­ ban, 2022a). Days later, the Taliban authorities carried out the first “public whipping” of as many as “12 convicts” including women in the eastern Logar Province, south of the capital Kabul (Government of the Taliban, 2022b), resulting in international outcry. The Taliban govern­ ment responded sternly to the criticism and vowed to continue executing the sharia in its true spirit (Government of the Taliban, 2022c). Dis­ regarding international condemnations, the Taliban have continued 4

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schools will be reopened after the formulation of a “new educational policy” and a “mechanism” to ensure compliance with the sharia to provide a “safe” educational environment (Government of the Taliban, 2021a; Government of the Taliban, 2021b). The Taliban have also said their government is committed to women rights “within the framework of sharia” and that women have been working at various departments and offices (Government of the Taliban, 2021b; Government of the Taliban, 2021c; Government of the Taliban, 2021d; Government of the Taliban, 2021e; Government of the Taliban, 2022d; Government of the Taliban, 2022e). The Taliban succeeded in reviving and hegemonizing their discourse progressively in over a year and will not abandon it. The Taliban Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund’s address to the nation in 2021 echoed what their regime had been consistently saying about women employ­ ment and girls’ education. The previous government had failed to pro­ tect working women but the Taliban administration restored their “dignity and honour” and the “Emirate safeguarded women’s rights” (Government of the Taliban, 2021d), he said adding, only Islamic edu­ cation was “obligatory” for “both men and women” and if people had “time, conditions were favourable, opportunity was available and there were no issues, then anyone can seek the education of other [contem­ porary] sciences too” (Ibid.). Similarly, the Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said in a meeting with the “provincial gover­ nors” that the regime would not rest until the “complete implementation of the sharia”. He directed the officials to execute his December 2021 “six-point decree” (Government of the Taliban, 2022f) which outlawed “forced marriages of women” and declared that women were “not a commodity” but “free” humans and could not be married off to settle personal enmities. It also stressed that women had to be given their due share in inheritance and that the polygamous men must ensure all rights of their wives (Government of the Taliban, 2021g). The order, however, is limited and applicable strictly in familial context and does not envisage any role for women in public life. The examples and the comparison I offered between both Taliban regimes show their policy discourse has not undergone any substantial transformation despite changes in Afghanistan. The main reason for that lies in the ideological foundations of the Taliban discourse. They believe that a just and fair Islamic society is not possible without the full application and execution of the discourse. There are, however, under­ lying contradictions within their discourse, elaborating on which re­ quires a critical evaluation of the historical developments in Islamic jurisprudence.

Aristotelian tradition saw women as emotional, lacking reason, and possessing a defective body thereby making them inferior to men. He, however, agreed with obligatory veil and segregation of men and women, not giving women the right to divorce, and argued that since a woman cannot be the breadwinner, the rulers were bound to enact a law to ensure that “her needs be satisfied by the man upon whom must be imposed her expenses” (Belo, 2009, p. 18). The Maliki school scholar Ibn Rushd (Averroes) over a century after Ibn Sina wrote a commentary on Plato’s Republic in which he explicitly stated that despite some anatomical differences between males and fe­ males, they were the “same” in “nature” so, women must “have the very same standing as men” and that women could become rulers, judges, philosophers and warriors (Averroes, 1974, pp. 57–58). He opposed pushing women to the margins of the political by lamenting that they were “placed at the service of their husbands and confined to procre­ ation, upbringing, and suckling” in Plato’s ideal city/state, where they “frequently resemble plants” having no meaningful purpose, which makes them become “a burden” on men who must earn for livelihood alone - a practice which is one of the main “causes of the poverty” (Ibid., p. 59). Referring to centuries old practices in Egypt, a Hanafi scholar Zayn al-Din (or al-Abidin) Ibn Nujaym, thought it was “valid for a woman to be head of state,” but Ibn Abidin, a jurist of the late Hanafi tradition, disagreed, arguing that only men could possess “supreme political au­ thority” and that “women should stay at home and keep themselves hidden” (Jalajel, 2017, pp. 166–167) from the public. To justify that, Ibn Abidin presents Abu Bakrah’s hadith (a reported saying, action, silent approval and criticism of matters by Prophet Muhammad) who reported that after getting the news that the “Persians had enthroned a daughter” of the king as their new leader, Prophet Muhammad said “never shall a people prosper who make a woman their ruler” (Elius, 2012, p. 198). He and many other jurists (cited in Osmani et al., 2020, pp. 57–59) disre­ gard the fact that trustworthiness and truthfulness of a narrator are of paramount importance in the process of hadith selection and collection and Abu Bakrah had earlier been “punished” for providing “false evi­ dence” (Elius, 2012, p. 202). Like in any discipline, jurists of Islamic traditions have also privi­ leged or rejected opinions of their predecessors and contemporaries. For example, Abu Hanifa thought it was permissible for old women only to offer congregational prayer at a mosque. His disciples al-Shaybani and Abu Yusuf argued that during the times of Muhammad and the first caliph Abu Bakr, women went to mosques, but the second caliph Umar bin al-Khattab “suspended the practice” (Ayoub, 2020, pp. 39–40). Similarly, Abu Hanifa believed women were allowed to be “judges and muftis (Muslim legal experts) to issue Islamic legal verdicts except in financial and criminal matters”, but others such as al-Tabari and Ibn Hazm argued “women could be judges in all issues” (Osmani et al., 2020, p. 57). There were many jurists of Sunni schools in different periods who argued for broader public role of women, but their voices were buried under the hegemonic discourse of the majority. Jalajel’s (2017) seminal work offers a comprehensive analysis of the classical legal texts about women and leadership in Islam. Table 1, derived from his analysis, offers a summary of the conclusions demonstrating that a plethora of jurists erase women from public sphere, and except Hanafi, the remaining traditions allow females as the leaders (imams) of women-only congregational prayers. The Table 1 and preceding discussion are helpful in exposing shaky and unstable foundations of political Islam, its inherent inconsistencies and to offer interrelated arguments for reasons behind rulings of jurists. First, due to societal transformation tensions between old and new ways of life have also led to diverse and divergent interpretation of religious texts. The decision of prohibiting women from prayers at mosques during the reign of caliph al-Khattab was aimed at preventing social strife which reveals that even practices that are “sanctioned by scripture and prophetic statements” (Ayoub, 2020, p. 40) are sometimes outlawed in favour of preserving social harmony.

Shaky foundations of the Taliban discourse The Taliban discourse, like all discourses, is historical (Foucault, 1980) and is rooted in the Hanafi tradition which is the oldest and largest among four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, named after their founders. It evolved in the eighth and nineth centuries and continued expanding, resulting in a huge bulk of diverse and varied body of literature. Compared to the three other doctrines, it is considered one of the most liberal and flexible (Warren, 2013) schools of Islamic law. Since this article specifically deals with the political and social role and agency of women, I eschew discussing salient features of the Hanafi school but briefly compare its reasoning with Maliki, Shafi’i, and Han­ bali schools to show similarities and differences in scholars’ approaches. Between nineth to sixteenth centuries, Muslim scholars’ analyzes regarding women’s role in society largely surrounded around the question of similarities and differences between men and women. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), who rose to prominence in the eleventh century for his ground-breaking multidisciplinary works including in Islam and juris­ prudence, broke away with dominant narratives by arguing that phys­ ical differences between men and women did not “constitute a differentia” but both are equally “rational” because if a woman was “not rational, she would not be part of the human species” (Belo, 2009, p. 18). This was a revolutionary claim considering that many scholars of the 5

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undermine and conceal one of the most powerful aspects of the Taliban discourse that is its overreliance on certain jurists’ pronouncements which they consider fixed, immutable, and always applicable. Three, the Taliban discourse heavily draws upon patriarchal ideas enabling dividing practices and exclusion of women from the public sphere. However, apart from the people of Afghanistan, rights groups and many countries, Muslim scholars have also strongly criticized the Tali­ ban policies. In December 2022, Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of alAzhar, in Cairo, Egypt “deeply regret[ed]” the Taliban decree on pre­ venting girls from attending universities and challenged its legal basis by asking, “how did the authors of this decision miss more than two thousand honorable hadiths in the most authentic books of the Sunnis”? El-Tayeb noted that the ban was “a denial” of “legal rights that Islam” granted to women and men “equally” and that arguing “otherwise” was “a slander against this religion” (el-Tayeb, 2022). The Taliban acting higher education minister, in an interview with the state-run Radio Television Afghanistan, responded to criticisms saying it was the re­ sponsibility of an “Islamic government” to execute the “divine” law. Neda Mohammad Nadeem said, issues such as, female students living in dormitories without a mahram, publicly displaying “adornments”, violating the “obligatory” hijab, universities not following the gender segregation order, and that some study programmes like “engineering” and “agriculture” were not in accordance with the “honour and dignity” of women under Islamic law, which prompted the government to sus­ pend female university education (R.T.A. Pashto, 2022). Earlier, an Afghan scholar had challenged the Taliban order on mandatory hijab. Misbahullah Abdul Baki, in his Pashto-language article published by a pro-Taliban website, argued the move was “explicitly against Hanafi tradition” because several prominent jurists have concluded that the “fear of social strife” cannot be regarded as a valid reason to force women cover their faces (Abdul Baki, 2022). However, debates regarding veil and seclusion of women have remained unsettled for decades. In 1937, the al-Azhar Committee of Fatwa (non-binding verdict or opinion) had said Hanafi school was “not opposed to unveil­ ing” and the “Maliki school did not consider veiling a religious requirement” (Tucker, 2008, pp. 200–201). Decades later, Abul ‘Ala alMaududi, in his book, which the renowned Afghan Hanafi scholar Nematullah Shahrani translated into Dari (Persian) in 2015 (al-Maududi & Shahrani, 2015), stressed on imposing niqab (full face-covering) to prevent social strife, “sexual anarchy and emotional dispersion in the society” (al-Maududi, 1979, pp. 125–130). Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the then Grand Imam of al-Azhar, is­ sued a fatwa in 2003 after France announced banning all religious clothing, saying that although wearing a headscarf “was a divine obli­ gation for every Muslim woman,” as a predominantly “non-Muslim and sovereign country” France had “the right to ban its wearing in state schools” and abiding by the law would not mean that adult Muslim fe­ males were “disobeying the commands of their religion.” The European Council for Fatwa and Research, which gives “religious guidance to Muslims” in Europe, disagreed with Tantawi and issued a fatwa that hijab was compulsory (Tucker, 2008, pp. 206–209). These examples show that despite criticism and resistance, the discourse of political Islam remains patriarchal and hegemonic, and has further solidified and strengthened in the 21st century due to the resurgence of reformist movements (Ibid., p. 202) like the Taliban. I argue, the Taliban’s interpretation of the Hanafi tradition suits their objective of constructing a different kind of state, which makes their discourse political and analyzing it as an extremist religious enterprise is reductionist and paradoxical which also prevents ways to holistically examine its nuances and implications. The Taliban argue they aspire establishing a just and flourishing society for Afghans and believe it is only possible through full implementation of the Islamic law in its original and pure form. This, however, requires totalitarian dictatorship which in turn is an atavistic process involving undoing aberrations, removal of all impediments, and strategies of erasure, suppression, silencing, and inclusion/exclusion, that amount to necropolitics

Table 1 Sunni Schools on Women’s Role in Public Space - Source: Author, derived from Jalajel (2017). Areas

Maliki

Shafi’i

Hanbali

Hanafi

Woman as jurist/ judge

No

No

Yes, but in limited capacity

Woman as head of state/leader

No (except Ibn Rushd) No

No (except for Ibn Jarir al-Tabari) No

No

No (some said yes, though)

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Allowed in the beginning, but were later termed disliked as prohibited

Woman as prayer leader/imam Woman as leader of women-only congregations

Yes

Second, most of the “rulings that divest women of leadership roles” are of course supported by “evidence” and “arguments”, but not “generally” based on Quran i.e., the first and foremost source of the Is­ lamic law (Jalajel, 2017, p. 96). Instead, they are usually based on his­ torical practices, traditions and most importantly on ijma (consensus) and qiyas (analogical reasoning). This gives jurists the freedom of rein­ terpretation which explains all the variations and different practices in many Muslim-majority countries in Asia and Africa such as the preTaliban Afghanistan, Maldives and Pakistan, where Hanafi school’s principles are codified in the constitutions and laws (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, 2005; Government of the Republic of Maldives, 2008; National Assembly of Pakistan, 2012), and women make a considerable part of state organs and institutions. The Taliban’s discourse, on the other hand, emphasizes on the strict enforcement of the Islamic sharia which is incompatible with the complexities of (post) modern Afghan society and the Weberian state-model. Third, since the “late tenth and eleventh” centuries, “four Sunni schools of law developed a hierarchy of authorities”, which limited later jurists in exercising “independent discretion” (Burak, 2015, p. 7), hence slowing and curtailing the process of reinterpreting religious texts in the modern period. This was a crucial development which stabilizes the fluctuating and evolving nature of Islamic jurisprudence, making it at­ avistic, and allowing revivalist movements like the Taliban to exploit that fixity. Finally, like much of the (pre-)modern scientific and religious liter­ ature, knowledge production about Islam has been (and remains) heavily male dominated. “Negative attitudes towards women”, Jalajel (2017) argues, “are clearly prevalent in the works of all four schools of thought” (p. 143), where many scholars repeatedly refer to Abu Bak­ rah’s reported controversial hadith to argue against women’s intellec­ tual capabilities for their disqualification from holding public offices. Historical developments and processes created broad spectra or schema but also consolidated the discourse of political Islam letting governments and movements like the Taliban to construct juridical systems of their choice. The Taliban discourse has three salient traits. One, it is founded on the existing body of knowledge of Hanafi tradition and arguments linking it to Wahhabism or Salafism (Ansari, 2018, p. 46; Gopal & van Linschoten, 2017, p. 1; Kakar, 2010, p. 187) are misleading and invalid. Two, the Taliban eschew Afghanistan’s historical and current so­ ciocultural contexts. Their selective use of Hanafi jurists’ edicts shows they see culture as subordinate to the ideology and will Islamize or obliterate any cultural practices challenging the hegemony and conti­ nuity of their rule. This is contrary to the assumptions of some authors claiming, the Taliban discourse was linked to “certain rural Pashtun traditions of virtue” in the 1990s but later transformed by basing itself on “religious knowledge” (Gopal & van Linschoten, 2017, p. 1), or even worse, that it stemmed from the Pashtun modus vivendi (Saikal, 2018; Sharifi, 2018; Sultana, 2009). Such dangerously misleading arguments 6

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(Mbembe, 2019). The process ought to continue to (re)produce state institutions, discipline people, coerce them into submission, and construct new forms of identities. This is what I have called the discourse (and practice) of reverse state-building which does not mean returning to the stone-age in liberal sense, but a way of constructing an alternate entity that can resemble a traditional modern state but is simultaneously radically different from it. This discourse, emphasizing on statehood before and beyond its existing forms i.e., an ideal state with the rule of divine law, has far-reaching consequences which I discuss in the final section.

posing threats to social harmony. All this is achieved through a discourse which is immune to questioning. Such politics of confinement is, thus, unilateral, objectifying, divi­ sive, subjugating, disciplinary, productive, coercive; has immense power of silencing to prevent opposition and a dialogue (Sahill, 2019), and creates two layers of the spaces of confinement in Afghanistan under the Taliban. One is home where women are totally secure, disengaged and erased from the public sphere and the second is their fully shrouded body i.e., embodied confinement to prevent them from causing social discord. The veil acts like what Mbembe calls a “separation wall” which is erected to “resolve a problem of excess of presence, the very presence that some see as the origin of situations of unbearable suffering” (2019, p. 43). To ensure compliance and enforcement, the juridical discourse, thanks to its patriarchal tenets, sanctions and sets free the disciplinary and controlling gaze of the patrolling government officials (and men) and the violators are publicly shamed and punished. The securitization and depoliticization (Edkins, 1999) of women bodies, seriously curbs their agency because this discourse incarcerates them behind the walls and compels them to look at the world from the veil. The veil, hence, first separates the real, material world from the imaginary and then creates a complex alloy of both which leads to a condition where the differentiating line between both is blurred, and the living (objectified) subject evaporates into the domain of nothingness. Put differently, the subject alienates from itself and is forced to accept a new mode of social existence where its presence out there remains obscured. It is one of the most perilous and terrifying consequences of the Taliban’s unidirectional oppressive discourse, that, all under the guise of providing security and justice, effectively transforms biopolitics into necropolitics which creates, “death-worlds” where imposed conditions give the population “the status of the living dead” (Mbembe, 2019, p. 92). Such a death of people is necessary to achieve “absolute domina­ tion” (Ibid., 2019, p. 83) so that they can be consumed as fodder to create and then run the apparatus of the Taliban’s alternate state. It means the forceful application of the Taliban’s discourse will continue which will further diminish prospects for Afghan women’s political participation, deepen already existing societal divide and suppress the possibility of political alternatives seriously denting the future of the polity.

Necropolitics and the Taliban governmentality Biopower/biopolitics and necropower/necropolitics as Foucault (2002, 2003) and Mbembe (2019) respectively show, exist in opposing or reverse relationship. I argue, a delicate balance is involved between both which can transform biopolitics into necropolitics (politics of death) based on the context, structure, status, and power relations of the political (and politics within it). Biopower is precisely “power’s hold over life” enabling the state to own and exercise “the right to make live and to let die” (Foucault, 2003, p. 241) in not individualizing way but encompassing and targeting the entire population, which transforms the living-body into “a biopolitical reality” (Foucault, 2002, p. 137). The state’s interest in living and healthy bodies is imperative for its existence because people sustain and empower it. States use various technologies of power “to assert more control over individuals and the population” (Sahill, 2021, p. 175). The desire of “absolute domination” (Mbembe, 2019), through the discourses of juridical/sovereign power, individualized disciplining and holistic bio­ power can lead to different outcomes, the worst of which is when bio­ politics transforms into necropolitics or thanatopolitics (Foucault, 2002, p. 416). Here is where, Achille Mbembe draws our attention to state’s efforts of “generalized instrumentalization of human existence” (Mbembe, 2019, p. 68). Using slavery as an example, he claims that the slave suffers several losses namely, the “loss of a ‘home,’ loss of rights over one’s body, and loss of political status” (Ibid., pp. 74–75), enabling the occupier to achieve total domination. Here then, necropower is “not just the opposite of biopower” but something that has sprung from it thereby making the community vulnerable to a “social, cultural and civic death” collectively (Sahill, 2021, p. 180), and preventing it from resisting the oppressive discourse. The Taliban rule exhibits the very necropolitical characteristics. The Taliban have endowed the discourse of political Islam with a unique sanctity making it inviolable, and in over one and half year have managed nearly complete control over the people. The Taliban discourse stresses on regulating and controlling human bodies, individually and in totality, where they seek diminishing line between private and public to subjugate residents of the country. Like modern governmentalities of the Occident, their discourse also empha­ sizes on the importance of disciplining gaze and objectification of living (and to an extent dead) bodies, ergo making them primary and main sites of politics. The surveillance and objectification of people requires construction of an enemy or at least its image, and its subsequent dif­ ferentiation and seclusion from the friend. This dividing practice is the cornerstone of the “politics of confinement” which requires peculiar spaces (Sahill, 2021). After the withdrawal of the external enemy forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban needed to construct an enemy-within to produce an alternate form of political organization. For them, existing legal and institutional frameworks, the educational curricula, and threats to social harmony through practices allowing women’s social and political participation, constitute the enemy-within which is responsible for all the problems of Afghanistan and lack of true freedom. In the Taliban discourse, the woman body is the prime cause of social strife and a source of “shame” and “honour”, protecting which is the responsibility of a man. Men as breadwinners must work outside, but women must be confined at home to protect and prevent them from

Conclusion This article, utilizing a Foucauldian CDA, mapped the formation, dominance, and power effects of the Taliban’s discourse in Afghanistan. I noted that the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan has and will have farreaching consequences for women and their agency. The article showed that the Taliban discourse is rooted in the broad Hanafi tradition of the discourse of political Islam and rejected assumptions linking it to Wahhabism, Salafism and Afghan or Pashtun culture. Instead, Taliban see culture subordinate to their discourse and construct an enemywithin that they blame for all the problems and threats which they say can be resolved and mitigated through the full implementation of Is­ lamic law. This process involves replacing previous state’s apparatuses with an alternate political organization. This makes the Taliban discourse political and reducing it to religious extremism precludes its holistic understanding and interpretation. The establishment of a peculiar kind of state, I argued, requires elimination of all forms of resistance through the unidirectional, total­ itarian politics of confinement whose first target is women, and their removal from the public sphere. The Taliban governmental discourse possesses hallmarks of necropolitics intended to achieve total domina­ tion which means the imposition of political and social death on women (and men) of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s endeavour is paradoxical because it does not reflect the will of the people who continue resisting their rule. The Taliban’s idea of an Islamic state is highly inconsistent with the existing 7

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international order, and if established, will remain at the margins, and cannot survive for long in isolation. Also, thanks to growing internet penetration and interconnectedness, the Taliban or any totalitarian regime cannot effectively insulate the society from multidirectional globalization flows, influences, and forces.

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