Five years after the Taliban retook Afghanistan, women interviewed by the BBC describe lives transformed by bans on secondary and higher education for girls, restrictions on travel without a male chaperone, and a law implying legal approval for child marriage. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world officially barring girls from secondary and higher education, and only 7% of women are employed, according to the United Nations.
Women told the BBC of being flogged publicly, one receiving 50 lashes and forced to confess to being an 'apostate woman,' another lashed 39 times and jailed over a relationship. A midwife described watching a mother of six die after being unable to access adequate care under rules restricting treatment by male doctors, in a country with one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates.
The Taliban's foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, told the BBC that 'women are not totally restricted on all walks of life,' citing figures of three million girls in schools and madrassas and 120,000 female entrepreneurs, up from 30,000 before the takeover. Many of the women who spoke to the BBC used pseudonyms out of fear of reprisals.
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