WASHINGTON (AP) — For an idled worker at a Kabul-based aid group, Abaad, that helps abused Afghan women, frightened and often tearful calls are coming in, not only from her clients but also from her female colleagues.
A Dec. 24 order from the Taliban barring aid groups from employing women is paralyzing deliveries that help keep millions of Afghans alive, and threatening humanitarian services countrywide. As another result of the ban, thousands of women who work for such organizations across the war-battered country are facing the loss of income they desperately need to feed their own families.
The prohibition is posing one of the biggest policy challenges over Afghanistan for the United States and other countries since the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021 opened the door for the Taliban takeover. Those nations face the difficult task of crafting an international response that neither further worsens the plight of millions of aid-dependent Afghans nor caves in to the Taliban's crackdown on women.
The United Nations estimates that 85% of nongovernmental aid organizations in Afghanistan have partially or fully shut down operations because of the ban, which is the Taliban's latest step to drive women from public life.
Abaad was among those suspending its work. Its female employees provided support and counseling to women who endured rape, beatings, forced marriages or other domestic abuse.
Female clients told the Abaad worker that without the group’s help, they fear they will wind up on Kabul’s streets. For the worker herself and for thousands like her across Afghanistan, they depend on their paychecks to survive in a broken economy where aid officials say 97% of the population is now in poverty or at risk of it.
One colleague told her she was contemplating suicide.
The aid worker and others interviewed expressed hope that the United States, the United Nations and others will stand by them and persuade the Taliban to relent on the ban.
“That's all we ask. They should find a solution, find a way to support people here in Afghanistan,” she said. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of her safety.
The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss ongoing deliberations and they all spoke on condition of anonymity.
Aid group officials and analysts point to the difficulty of narrowing down what is lifesaving assistance, however. Food aid, certainly. But what about other forms of support such as maternal care, which has helped more than halve Afghanistan’s maternal mortality rate since the 1990s?
Major nongovernmental aid organizations say that without female workers, it's impossible for them to effectively reach the women and children who make up 75% of those in need. That's because of Afghanistan's conservative customs and the Taliban’s rules prohibiting contact between unrelated men and women.
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