RASC News Agency: When the Taliban violently reclaimed control of Afghanistan in August 2021, a dark curtain fell over the lives of millions of Afghanistani women. The return of this fundamentalist regime did not merely signal a change in government it marked the obliteration of basic human rights, particularly for women. In their ruthless pursuit of ideological dominance, the Taliban have weaponized gender discrimination, turning once-thriving professionals into silenced victims. Among the most tragically affected are Afghanistan’s female doctors former champions of progress who now find themselves marginalized, threatened, and stripped of dignity under the crushing weight of Taliban rule.
Once hailed as symbols of resilience and reform, women physicians were tangible proof that Afghanistan was capable of producing empowered, educated, and professional women. But today, these very women are being erased from public life. Their voices muted, their workplaces shuttered, and their futures uncertain, they endure an existence governed by fear. In a recent interview with the legal monitoring platform JURIST, a female neurologist who asked to remain anonymous for her safety described her daily life under Taliban rule:
“Since the fall of the republic, my world has collapsed. I no longer feel safe. My sense of self-worth has vanished. Practicing medicine a calling I once cherished has become a waking nightmare.”
Her testimony is not isolated. It is echoed in whispers and anonymous accounts from across the country, particularly in cities like Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif, where Taliban intelligence closely monitors women in the medical profession. Under this reign of terror, a mere expression of dissatisfaction can lead to arrest, torture, or enforced disappearance. This regime of psychological warfare is designed not just to silence women, but to erase them altogether. By banning women and girls from studying nursing, midwifery, and other medical sciences, the Taliban have launched a targeted assault not only on women’s rights but on the entire healthcare system. They have systematically dismantled the infrastructure that once enabled millions of women to access life-saving medical services. The consequences are catastrophic.
“The Taliban are not simply restricting our rights,” said the same physician. “They are suffocating our very existence. We’ve been robbed not only of education and employment but even the right to breathe with dignity.” Nowhere is this cruelty more evident than in Afghanistan’s rural provinces, where women are barred from seeing male doctors and female healthcare workers have been pushed out entirely. Expectant mothers are forced to give birth at home without medical assistance leading to a horrifying surge in maternal and infant mortality. These deaths are not incidental; they are the direct result of a regime that prioritizes ideological purity over human life.
Despite numerous warnings from international agencies, including the United Nations, the Taliban have remained defiantly indifferent. Their disregard for international law, humanitarian principles, and basic decency underscores a fundamental truth: this is not a government. It is a tyranny posing as one, sustained by fear, enforced ignorance, and the systematic degradation of women. Female doctors in Afghanistan also face a more insidious form of repression psychological censorship. Every word spoken, every social media post, every private conversation carries the risk of punishment. In this environment, silence is no longer consent it is a survival strategy.
“We live like shadows,” another Kabul-based doctor confided. “We cannot raise our voices. We cannot protest. The Taliban fear educated, independent women more than they fear any armed threat.” Yet, even in this atmosphere of suffocation, Afghanistani women refuse to vanish. Harnessing digital tools, underground networks, and encrypted communications, they continue to learn, teach, and treat. In defiance of the regime’s misogyny, they are building invisible corridors of resistance. “We are not defeated,” one of them asserted. “We are silenced but we are still here. Our voices may be buried under Taliban decrees, but they will rise again.”
The Taliban’s relentless campaign against women particularly against those who embody knowledge, professionalism, and autonomy has laid bare their true nature. This is not a movement that seeks reform or peace. It is an extremist enterprise that views empowered women as enemies of the state. The international community must stop pretending otherwise. Continued humanitarian aid, absent of enforceable human rights conditions, only serves to legitimize a gender apartheid regime. No amount of diplomacy can mask the reality that the Taliban are orchestrating a deliberate and brutal erasure of women from Afghanistani society.
The world must not remain a passive spectator to this slow-motion annihilation of a generation of women professionals. Afghanistan’s female doctors are not just victims they are frontline resisters. Their courage deserves more than pity; it demands action. If the world truly believes in justice, dignity, and human rights, then it must stand with these women not with the men who would see them erased.
