An Afghan teenager has been filmed begging a Taliban official for a divorce only for him to refuse her request then decalre that women are ‘mindless’.
The 18-year-old pleaded with grey-bearded Governor Abdullah Sarhadi explaining calmly that her husband is violent and beats her.
‘If there was any chance to live together, I wouldn’t be here… I have taken my decision,’ she said, while wearing a burqa and sunglasses.
Under Taliban rule, women who ask and are granted a divorce may have to give her husband some or all of the money he received at their wedding – although, this teen’s partner has asked for four times the original amount, a value the girl’s family has refused to pay.
But the heartless elder, once an insurgent outsider and seasoned Taliban commander in the 1990s who now serves as governor of Jawzjan province, dismisses the anonymous girl’s appeal and tries to persuade her to stay with her husband.
‘Ask yourself: “Who would marry me after I get my divorce?” You’ll have to compromise a lot or you’ll lose your dignity and honour,’ he said, to which she responded that ‘my honour and dignity have already been ruined’.
He goes on to call women ‘deficient in intellect’, ‘mindless’ and ‘don’t know a thing’, comments that receive approving laughter by the group of men that surround him.
Under the Taliban’s first rule, Mr Sarhadi served as a military commander in Bamiyan, where giant Buddha statues were blown up, a move that received widespread condemnation internationally.
An Afghan teenager has been filmed begging a Taliban official for a divorce from a violent husband who beats her
Jawzjan province Governor Abdullah Sarhadi dismisses the anonymous girl’s appeal and goes on to call women ‘deficient in intellect’, ‘mindless’ and ‘don’t know a thing’
He was held for several years in Guantanamo Bay after the Taliban surrendered in 2001 when a US-led coalition ousted the extremist group, but now serves as deputy commander of a military corps in the northern province of Kunduz alongside his role as governor.
The official told the girl her husband will be warned to no longer beat her ‘otherwise he’d be jailed’ and advised that she should have her own room.
Unsatisfied, the girl’s father said he will try for a divorce again, this time through the courts, although it is not expected to succeed as the Taliban’s court system rarely grants cases which do not have the husband’s consent.
The extraordinary moment was captured in a BBC documentary, The Taliban: Coming Out Of The Shadows, that revisits Afghanistan five years on from the fall of the previous government backed by the US.
Although the Taliban came into power suggesting they had changed from their hard-lined Sharia stance established in the 1990s, many of their strict laws based on interpretations of Islamic scripture have been slowly reintroduced.
In recent years, women have had many of their rights stripped away under Taliban rule, blocking them from secondary and university education, forbidding them from speaking in public and forcibly marrying young girls.
‘I think the Taliban are scared. They are scared of educated women because they wont give birth to ignorant beings such as the Taliban,’ one Afghan woman tells the BBC in their documentary.
Limitations on employment have also been introduced – in the Panjshir province, the Taliban recently told female doctors working at a local hospital that they would not be allowed to work unless they wore a burqa.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group, in Kabul, Afghanistan (2023)
The destroyed Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, that was destroyed by a military team led by Governor Abdullah Sarhadi under the Taliban’s first rule (2001)
Earlier this year, the Taliban legalised child marriage with the consent of a male relative, after it became banned in 2009.
Afghanistan has a traditional practice called ‘baad’, which sees families hand over their young daughters to settle disputes and debts.
Earlier this month, it was reported that a 14-year-old girl spent nearly two years in a Taliban prison, at times suffering torture, after she refused to marry an elderly local commander.
Bibi Sediqa has spent the last 21 months in a harsh Taliban jail for refusing to marry 70-year-old Mawlawi Khodainazar, an influential commander in Afghanistan’s Badghis province, according to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
There are also increasingly strict regulations governing their appearance and movement in public, enforced by barbaric morality police, who frequently arrest women who allegedly violate their strict Sharia law dress codes.
According to a Herat resident, women are becoming increasingly afraid to leave their homes, telling Amu TV: ‘They harass women everywhere under the pretext of enforcing morality,’ the resident said.
‘Women are being detained, intimidated and subjected to psychological abuse, yet no one is listening.’
A recent protest against the morality police left one person dead and several more wounded after officials opened fire on dozens of demonstrators who took to the streets in June to denounce the detention of women and girls arrested for violating the country’s dress code.
A commemorative military parade took place at the beginning of August to mark the anniversary of Taliban rule in the country, which also saw several sporting events held – from which women were also banned.
Leading women’s rights campaigner and Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy said at the time Britain should put pressure on allies such as India and Qatar, who maintain contact with the Taliban.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘What is happening is gender apartheid. The extremes against women are extraordinary.
‘You apply pressure [through] the people who are speaking to, and who are in contact with, the leadership there. You try to drive a wedge between the people who are more progressive and those who are still in the Dark Ages.’
