In most parts of the world, women’s rights have advanced in the last 50 years, albeit at an incremental rate. And then there’s Afghanistan.
Women had been advancing for the past two decades (becoming high-ranking police officers and regional governors, forming cricket teams) in cities like Kabul and Bamiyan. But now, with the Taliban at the helm, it’s over, as women flee for life, hide at home or die at the hands of the new government.
For adults to remember, this is a heartbreaking call from half a century ago, when Afghan women began to come out from under the veil, only to crush their dreams.
French photographer Laurence Brun Lacombe lived in Afghanistan with her husband from 1971 to 1972, and took many photographs of women across the country. On the one hand, much of what he saw seemed for centuries.
“Outside Kabul, all the women wore chador [burkha]Lacombe recalled. “I went to the country to the peasants’ houses in Nuristan and Jalalabad. [As a woman,] I couldn’t travel alone. “
But in Kabul, in the new city, women were exploring new freedoms: attending mixed classes with men and pursuing careers as nurses, teachers, and government officials. “Most of the women wore the veil and … some schoolgirls went alone [a head scarf]”.
This required a certain amount of courage.
“Some women were fighting for their rights, but the traditions were very strong, so it wasn’t that easy,” Lacombe said.
One day, he met a group of young women in miniskirts. “It baffled me,” the photographer recalled. “I couldn’t believe what I saw … They were very young and naive students.
Women in Afghanistan.
Students in Kabul, 1972.
Zoichga Hospital School of Nursing and Midwives, Kabul.
“It was a small percentage of girls and students who would wear short skirts and it was dangerous for them. They could get acid [splashed] in his legs “.
In 1973, there seemed to be real hope for women in Afghanistan: King Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973 by his cousin, Mohammed Daoud Khan, a pro-Soviet general who proposed a new constitution and gave the women new rights and freedoms.
But the modernizations were too controversial and the general was assassinated five years later. In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States severed ties with the country’s government and, along with Britain and China, began funding anti-Soviet Mujahideen fighters, who eventually formed the Taliban. .
In the midst of all the fighting, all the small, hard-earned gains by women in the country disappeared, just as they do today.
Lacombe, for example, will always have a place for Afghanistan at heart: “Everyone I know has been there can’t forget this country.” But, he added, “it’s so sad what’s happening now.”
