With New Taliban Manifesto, Afghan Women Fear the Worst
CHRISTINA GOLDBAUM, NAJIM RAHIM
一些专家认为，阿富汗是世界上对妇女限制最严格的国家。 Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesNo education beyond the sixth grade. No employment in most workplaces and no access to public spaces like parks, gyms and salons. No long-distance travel if unaccompanied by a male relative. No leaving home if not covered from head to toe.教育程度不超过六年级。不能在大多数工作场所就业，并且不能进入像公园、健身房和美容院这样的公共场所。如果没有男性亲属陪伴，不得长途旅行。如果不从头遮到脚，不能离开家。And now, the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, according to a 114-page manifesto released late last month that codifies all of the Taliban government’s decrees restricting women’s rights.而现在，根据阿富汗上月底发布的一份114页的告示——该文件将塔利班政府所有限制妇女权利的政令正式确定为法律——女性在除了自家以外的地方发出声音，都属于非法行为。A large majority of the prohibitions have been in place for much of the Taliban’s three years in power, slowly squeezing Afghan women out of public life. But for many women across the country, the release of the document feels like a nail in the coffin for their dreams and aspirations.在塔利班执政三年的大部分时间里，大多数禁令都已经在实施了，慢慢地将阿富汗妇女挤出公共生活。但对于全国各地的许多女性来说，这份文件的发布感觉像是给她们梦想和抱负的棺木钉上了钉子。Some had clung to the hope that the authorities might still reverse the most severe limitations, after Taliban officials suggested that high schools and universities would eventually reopen for women after they were shuttered. For many women, that hope is now dashed.一些人曾对当局可能会取消最严厉的限制抱有希望，因为塔利班官员曾暗示，关闭后的高中和大学最终将重新对女性开放。然而，对许多女性来说，这一希望如今已破灭了。“We are going back to the first reign of the Taliban, when women did not have the right to leave the house,” said Musarat Faramarz, 23, a woman in Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, referring to the movement’s rule from 1996 to 2001. “I thought that the Taliban had changed, but we are experiencing the previous dark times again.”“我们正在回到塔利班第一次统治的时代，那时女性没有权利离开家。”来自阿富汗北部巴格兰省的23岁女性穆萨拉特·法拉马兹说道，她指的是塔利班在1996年至2001年间的统治。“我以为塔利班已经改变，但我们又在经历之前的黑暗时期。”Since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, the authorities have systematically rolled back the rights that women — particularly those in less conservative urban centers — had won during the 20-year U.S. occupation. Today, Afghanistan is the most restrictive country in the world for women, and the only one that bans high school education for girls, experts say.自塔利班于2021年8月重新上台以来，当局系统性地剥夺了女性的权利（尤其是那些生活在不那么保守的城市中心的女性），她们在美国占领20年期间赢得了这些权利。专家表示，今天，阿富汗是世界上对女性限制最多的国家，也是唯一一个禁止女孩接受高中教育的国家。
女孩在俯瞰喀布尔的山坡上玩耍，摄于去年。 Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesThe publication of the regulations has ignited fears of a coming crackdown by emboldened officers of the so-called vice and virtue police, the government officials who don white robes and are stationed on street corners to ensure that the country’s morality laws are observed.这些规定的发布引发了人们对即将到来的打击行动的担忧，所谓的“扬善防恶警察”正受到鼓舞，这些政府官员穿着白色长袍，被部署在街头巷尾，以确保该国的道德法律得到遵守。The manifesto defines for the first time the enforcement mechanisms that can be used by these officers. While they have frequently issued verbal warnings, those officers are now empowered to damage people’s property or detain them for up to three days if they repeatedly violate the vice and virtue laws.该告示首次界定了这些官员可以使用的执法机制。虽然他们现在往往是予以口头警告，但现在如果有人屡教不改，这些官员有权采取经济惩罚手段，或者处以最多三天的拘留。Before the announcement of the laws, Freshta Nasimi, 20, who lives in Badakhshan Province in northeastern Afghanistan, had held on to any shred of hope she could find.在这些法律宣布之前，居住在阿富汗东北部巴达赫尚省的20岁女性弗雷什塔·纳西米本来还抱有一线希望。For a while, she was sustained by a rumor she heard from classmates that the government would broadcast girls’ schooling over the television — a concession that would allow girls to learn while keeping them in their homes. But that dream was snuffed out after the authorities in Khost Province, in the country’s east, banned such programs from the airwaves earlier this year. That signaled that other parts of the country could implement similar bans.有一段时间，她从同学那里听到一个传言，说政府有意让女孩通过电视进行学校教育——这是一种让步，允许女孩在家里学习。但在该国东部的霍斯特省当局今年早些时候禁止此类节目播出后，这个梦想被扼杀了。这表明该国其他地区可能也会实施类似的禁令。Now, Ms. Nasimi says, she is trapped at home. The new law barring women’s voices — they are considered an intimate part of a woman that must be covered — effectively ensures that she cannot leave the house without a male relative. She worries that no taxi driver will speak with her, for fear of being reprimanded by the Taliban, she said, and no shopkeeper will entertain her requests.纳西米说，现在她被困在家里。这项禁止女性发出声音——声音被视为女性的私密部分，必须被遮盖——的新法律实际上确保了女性在没有男性亲属的情况下不能离开家。她说，她担心没有出租车司机会和她说话，因为害怕遭到塔利班的斥责，而且也没有店主会满足她的要求。
塔利班重新上台之前，朱兹詹省的一所学校，摄于2021年。 Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
She has accepted that her aspirations of becoming an engineer — with the steady income and freedom it would bring — are finished.
她一直怀有成为一名工程师的梦想——以及它带来的稳定收入和自由，现在梦想破灭了。
“My future?” she asked, resigned. “I don’t have a future except being a housewife and raising children.”
“我的未来？”她无奈地问道。“除了做家庭主妇和抚养孩子，我没有未来。”
The publication of the vice and virtue laws, analysts say, is part of a governmentwide effort to codify the workings of every ministry to ensure they adhere to the extreme vision of Shariah law institutionalized by the Taliban’s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada. The document is also, analysts say, intended to stamp out any Western principles of the U.S.-backed government that ran Afghanistan before the Taliban’s return to power.
The Taliban have forcefully rejected outside pressure to ease the restrictions on women, even as the policies have isolated Afghanistan from much of the West. Taliban officials defend the laws as rooted in the Islamic teachings that govern the country. “Afghanistan is an Islamic nation; Islamic laws are inherently applicable within its society,” the spokesman for the government, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a statement.
But the regulations have drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. The mission’s head, Roza Otunbayeva, called them “a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future” that extends the “already intolerable restrictions” on women’s rights.
Even visual cues of womanhood have been slowly scrubbed from the public realm.
甚至连女性身份的视觉暗示也慢慢地从公共领域中消失了。
Over the past three years, women’s faces have been torn from advertisements on billboards, painted over in murals on school walls and scratched off posters lining city streets. The heads of female mannequins, dressed in all-black, all-concealing abayas, are covered in tinfoil.
喀布尔街头的美容广告遭到人为污损。 Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesEven before the new manifesto, the threat of being reprimanded by the vice and virtue police lingered in the air as women were barred from more and more public places.甚至在新告示发布之前，随着越来越多的公共场所禁止女性进入，扬善防恶执法警察斥责的威胁始终存在。“I live at home like a prisoner,” said Ms. Faramarz, the woman from Baghlan. “I haven’t left the house in three months,” she added.“我像囚犯一样住在家里，”来自巴格兰的法拉玛兹说。“我已经三个月没出门了，”她补充道。The reversal of rights has been perhaps the hardest for the girls who came of age in an era of opportunity for women during the U.S. occupation.对于那些在美国占领时期女性有充分机会的时代长大的女孩来说，权利的逆转可能是最困难的。Some girls, determined to plow ahead with their education, have found ad hoc ways to do so. Underground schools for girls, often little more than a few dozen students and a tutor tucked away in people’s private homes, have cropped up across the country. Others have turned to online classes, even as the internet cuts in and out.一些决心继续接受教育的女孩，已找到临时的解决办法。全国各地出现了针对女孩的地下学校，这些学校通常只有几十名学生和一名导师，她们藏身于私宅。还有人则转向网络课程，即使网络时断时续。Mohadisa Hasani, 18, began studying again about a year after the Taliban seized power. She had talked to two former classmates who were evacuated to the United States and Canada. Hearing about what they were studying in school stoked jealousy in her at first. But then she saw opportunity, she said.18岁的穆哈迪萨·哈桑尼在塔利班夺取政权约一年后又开始学习。她与两位撤离到美国和加拿大的老同学交谈。起初，听到她们在学校学习的内容让她感到嫉妒，但随后她意识到这是一个机会。She asked those friends to spend an hour each week teaching her the lessons they were learning in physics and chemistry. She woke up for the calls at 6 a.m. and spent the days in between poring over photos of textbooks sent by the friends, Mina and Mursad.她请这些朋友每周花一个小时教她她们在物理和化学课上学到的东西。她早上6点起床跟她们通话。并在两次课程之间认真阅读米娜和穆尔萨德这两位朋友发来的教科书照片。
喀布尔的一条街道，摄于去年。 Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“Some of my friends are painting, they are writing, they are doing underground taekwondo classes,” Ms. Hasani said. “Our depression is always there, but we have to be brave.”
“我的一些朋友在画画，在写作，参加地下跆拳道班，”哈桑尼说。“我们一直都很郁闷，但我们必须勇敢。”
“I love Afghanistan, I love my country. I just don’t love the government and people forcing their beliefs onto others,” she added.
“我爱阿富汗，我爱我的国家。我只是不喜欢政府和人们把自己的信仰强加给别人，"她补充道。
The classes and artistic outlets, while informal, have given girls, especially in more progressive cities, a dose of hope and purpose. But the reach of those programs goes only so far.
Rahmani, 43, who preferred to go by only her surname for fear of retribution, said that she began taking sleeping pills every night to dampen the anxiety she feels over providing for her family.
A widow, Ms. Rahmani worked for nonprofit groups for nearly 20 years before the Taliban seized power, earning more than enough to provide for her four children. Now, she says, she not only cannot provide for them after women were barred from working for such groups — but she has also lost her sense of self.
“I miss the days when I used to be somebody, when I could work and earn a living and serve my country,” Ms. Rahmani explained. “They have erased our presence from society.”
