RASC News Agency: The Turkic Women’s Movement of Afghanistan has categorically rejected recent statements made by Cheryl Benard author, commentator, and spouse of Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan condemning her remarks as dangerously misleading, factually baseless, and morally indefensible in the face of escalating gender repression under Taliban rule. In a statement released on Wednesday, the movement accused Benard of contributing to the normalization of a regime that has institutionalized systemic discrimination against women and girls. According to the statement, her portrayal of the situation in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan amounts to “a gross distortion of reality that dangerously sanitizes one of the most repressive gender regimes in the modern world.”
Benard, who reportedly visited Taliban-controlled areas recently, claimed in a published article that girls are permitted to pursue education in private schools up to the 12th grade, that the country is experiencing improved security, and that concerns surrounding the forced deportation of Afghanistani refugees from the United States are “overstated.” Her claims have provoked outrage from women’s rights activists both inside and outside Afghanistan. “Her remarks reflect either a willful ignorance or a deliberate erasure of the suffering of millions of Afghanistani women and girls,” the statement reads. “Such comments embolden the Taliban’s propaganda machine and betray the core values of human dignity, justice, and international solidarity.” Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed one of the most draconian gender policies in the world. Girls have been banned from attending secondary school and university; women are barred from working in most sectors, traveling without a male escort, or even appearing in public without being fully veiled. The few remaining educational opportunities exist only through clandestine and community-run networks often operated at great personal risk by activists and educators defying Taliban diktats.
The Turkic Women’s Movement emphasized that whatever limited access to education might exist for girls is not a result of Taliban benevolence, but rather the brave defiance of communities resisting institutionalized misogyny. “To praise the Taliban for allowing any form of education is to credit the jailer for leaving the prison door half-open,” the statement declared. Benard’s remarks on security were also rejected as misleading. While the Taliban claim to have brought “stability,” the statement stressed that true security cannot exist in a society where half the population lives in constant fear, stripped of agency, voice, and visibility.
“The Taliban have turned our homes into silent prisons, murdered our brothers, and raised our children in atmospheres of fear and ideological coercion,” the statement continues. “This is not peace it is gendered oppression masquerading as order.” The women’s movement accused Western commentators like Benard of facilitating the Taliban’s international rebranding by portraying isolated or staged events as representative of national conditions. “Her comments mirror the Taliban’s own talking points, failing to interrogate the regime’s brutality or engage with those most affected by it Afghanistan’s women,” the statement noted.
The group concluded by calling on international media outlets, human rights organizations, and global institutions to unequivocally reject narratives that attempt to whitewash the Taliban’s crimes, and instead center the voices of Afghanistani women who continue to resist the regime’s brutal, gender-based apartheid. “We do not seek pity,” they wrote. “We seek justice, freedom, and the dignity that is the birthright of every human being. The international community must stop listening to those who excuse tyranny and start acting alongside those who fight it.” As the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Afghanistan deepens, voices like those of the Turkic Women’s Movement serve as urgent reminders that no peace built on the erasure of women can be sustainable and no stability forged through silence can be just.
