The plight of Afghan women can no longer be ignored

A few weeks ago, Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch came under fire for saying that not all cultures are ‘equally valid’. Talking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch rightly pointed out that ‘cultures that believe in child marriage, or that women don’t have equal rights’ are not in line with ‘Western principles’.

Bizarrely, she was branded as ‘racist’ for this statement of fact. But her comments seem particularly apt after the latest developments in Afghanistan, where women are being reduced to less than second-class citizens.

The BBC reported last month that, in another awful blow to the women of Afghanistan, a Taliban court has invalidated the divorce of a child bride. Bibi Nazdana, now aged 20, fought for two years to free herself from a marriage that her father arranged to settle a dispute with another family. Just 10 days after the Taliban took over from the US-backed government in 2021, Nazdana’s separation was revoked.

Nazdana’s father promised her to a much older man when she was just seven years old and they were ‘married’ when she was 15. She approached the US-backed Afghan government at the time and filed for separation. Two years later, the court granted her a divorce. But when the Taliban returned to power, her former ‘husband’ challenged the ruling.

Nazdana was told she could not appear in court and had to be represented by her brother. Although he tried to explain on her behalf that the marriage was likely to be abusive and a threat to her life, the court found against her. She was told that the divorce she had previously been granted was against Sharia law. The two siblings have now fled the country for their lives.

Cases like Nazdana’s have sparked fear that many more young women and girls will be forcibly returned to their ex-husbands and made to remain in abusive or unwanted marriages. This seems all too likely, as the Taliban recently issued a series of hardline edicts that effectively banish women from public life. As actress Meryl Streep put it in an address to the United Nations last month: ‘Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedom than a woman.’

In light of these awful developments in Afghanistan, it seems absurd that anyone could disagree with Badenoch’s statement that not all cultures are equal. Regardless of where you are from, the majority of people the world over rightly recognise that the Taliban’s treatment of women is abhorrent – no matter how much they try to justify it by claiming religious virtue. Forcing children to marry is particularly repugnant to all decent people. The practice of baad marriages that Nazdana was subject to, in which a female is traded like a commodity between feuding families, is actually illegal under Afghan law – albeit only for widows and women over the age of 18, and sanctions against it are rarely enforced.

It is certainly not racist to say that such practices and treatment of women are barbaric and backwards. After all, culture is not the same as race. Race is based on immutable characteristics, whereas culture is fluid and can be changed. Though cultures may differ, they do not differ to such a degree that human beings are not able to discern which cultural practices are a force for good and for human flourishing, and which are dysfunctional and harmful.

In the UK, there are thankfully very few barriers to women’s freedom. These liberties were only achieved by brilliant and determined people who had to fight against the dominant culture of their time, which didn’t allow women to vote or pursue an education and career. Enlightenment-era thinker and bluestocking Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about how culture had to change to allow women to develop their intellects and not be subservient to men. A century later, women argued, marched and were imprisoned for their demands for the right to vote – which they weren’t granted universally until 1928. Throughout the 20th century, women subsequently reached unparalleled heights in education, business and politics. It is not an imposition of ‘Western values’ to want the same for women all over the world.

We must have the moral clarity to assert this without confusion or hesitation. The repulsive treatment of women by the Taliban cannot be excused as a cultural practice that’s ‘equally valid’. It is a backward step in our own society that we have allowed this cowardly defence to cover for such intolerable misogyny.

Candice Holdsworth is a writer. Visit her website here.