"I am a journalist and I am not allowed to work. What will I do next? The next generation will have nothing, everything we have achieved in twenty years will be gone. The Taliban is the Taliban. They have not changed", this was the reaction of 28-year-old Khadija Amin, a prominent journalist on state television, after she was suspended by the Taliban as the extremist group has officially taken charge of the country after regaining control of its entire territory. The resurgence of the Taliban was not delightful news for many, particularly for the Afghan women as they expressed their fear that their future would be ruined and they will be taken aback by what would mirror the reign of the Taliban between 1996 to 2001.

The insurgents had risen to the power after twenty years and on Sunday, the group had successfully captured Kabul after taking over the control of smaller towns and larger cities in just days of time after collapsing the citadel built by the US and Afghan forces in two decades. Taliban had furiously advanced towards the reign by breaking all the frontiers posed against them and recouped the authority to establish their conservative rule of law, putting the generation of Afghan people to a medieval period by barring basic rights and conduct of living. The rapid rise of the Taliban was made possible after the drawdown of the US and NATO troops from Afghan soil.  

The withdrawal of forces and the fleeing of then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani from the country had left the Afghan people to brace the dismaying fact that they were being abandoned by the world by leaving them under the Taliban's second reign. Hundreds of thousands of desperate Afghans had thronged to the Kabul airport with the vagued aim of leaving the country after the city has fallen to the insurgents. The generations who have born after 2001 would be witnessing an era that they weren't taught and thought of and the generations who had seen the first reign of the Taliban are reminiscing the atrocities and tortures posed on them by the insurgents as those people are still sceptical that the Taliban has changed and will pledge to uphold the values of lives in the version of humanity. 

The plight of Khadija Amin is one among thousands who fear that their future would be dark and tyrannical past under the brand new reign of the Taliban, which now has little or in fact no adversary to oust the group from the power. According to the New York Times, Khadija Amin had told a Clubhouse chat room that the Taliban had suspended her and other women employees. Ironically, the Taliban keep the people judging of their future under its rule as on the other hand, a woman news anchor had interviewed a Taliban official in a TV show. On Tuesday, Beheshta Arghand of Tolo News channel had interviewed Mawlawi Abdulhaq Hemad, a member of the Taliban's media team. 

While she asked about the Taliban's house-to-house searches in the Afghan capital, Hemad has claimed that the entire world now recognizes that the Taliban are the real rulers of the country. His statement has come in the albeit of most of the developed countries had affirmed their declaration that the Taliban is a terrorist organization and they didn't come to power by getting elected by the people. On Tuesday, the Taliban group had addressed a press meet for the first time after capturing the country during which the group has claimed that the women will be allowed to work and study as long as they stick to the Islamic values. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, "No prejudice against women will be allowed, but the Islamic values are our framework." 

Mujahid said that women could participate in society within the bounds of Islamic law. His statement has come ahead of the arrival of Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar, who is the co-founder of the Taliban, has stepped into Afghanistan for the first time in twenty years and he arrived at the Kandahar airport after the group had successfully regained control of the country. The New York Times reported another Taliban official saying that women should participate in government. However, most of the women have expressed that their lives would be dissipated and as Khadija Amin said, they believe that the Taliban is the Taliban and they kept the fire for twenty years not to rule the people as per the wish of the latter but to invoke the system that would persuade their version of values and principles. 

Within days of their comeback, the Taliban group had sent signs that women and girls must get settled for a whammy era by leaving the two-decades life behind. The Times has reported that the Taliban have begun to enforce their orders in some areas of the country as women in some provinces have been ordered not to leave their residence without a male relative accompanying them. In Herat, which is one of the largest cities in Afghanistan, the Taliban fighters had secured the entrance of the university and restricted female students and instructors from entering the campus on Tuesday and the women's health care clinics were shut down in Kandahar as women and girls are worrying returning to the world of dependency and authoritarianism. 

At Kabul University, women students were ordered not to leave their dorm rooms without a male relative and as the sequel of the Taliban's reign, the prices of burqa had surged as women are thronging to buy burqa to cover them from the head to toe by fearing to the Taliban that they would be tortured by the insurgents if seen wearing western attire. In a message, a 27-year-old professor of a varsity has said, "I am from the generation that had a lot of opportunities after the fall of Taliban 20 years ago. I was able to achieve my goals of studying, and for a year I have been a university professor, and now, my future is dark and uncertain. All these years of working hard and dreaming were nothing."

Khadija Amin further said that the last time she read the news on-air was Sunday at 9 am before the Taliban took control of Kabul and on Sunday evening, a Taliban official had replaced her in the anchor chair. The observers say that the Taliban is displaying a sense that the Afghan people should see only them and they should hear their dictations. Though the Taliban give more weight to their notion that they will construct a tolerate government by allowing women to study and work, the activists say that this notion won't last long as their rule would be akin to what was in the previous reign. The visuals from Kabul had shown that the advertisements carrying women on walls and posters were either removed or painted and the Kabul residents have been tearing down the commercials showing women without headscarves. 

Taliban's last reign from 1996 to 2001 was hell for women. The Taliban had imposed severe restrictions on the behaviour, dressing, and movement of women during their first reign and the insurgents had humiliated and tortured women who had breached these restrictions. According to Amnesty International, a global human rights watchdog, the Taliban had severed off the thumb of a woman for wearing nail polish. This incident has happened in 1996 and the women accused of adultery were stoned to death and the group has declared homosexuality was a crime punishable by death. 

They had also banned education for women and ordered that men should not take off their beards while women must wear a burqa. For the schoolgoing girls of the current generation, it is feared that these restrictions would become their fate and they won't have a guarantee that they can pursue their education. Women also fear that they would be slaved for sexual purposes by the Taliban as such eerie fashion was there in their first reign. The women were bribed to the Taliban fighters and such harassment can happen in the coming days and weeks and their opportunities will also be seized.

According to the Times, during the last two decades under the US invasion, the United States has invested more than $780 million to encourage women's rights. Girls and women have joined the military and police forces, held political office, competed in the Olympics, and done researches on engineering and robotics. As the Taliban has now come back to power, the group could possibly command the women that it's enough and it's time to get back to the medieval era under their version of rule and values. The current generations of girls and women fear that they can't nurture their dreams and chase opportunities. 

On Monday, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the global body has been receiving chilling reports of severe restrictions on human rights throughout Afghanistan. He was addressing the emergency meeting of the Security Council concerning the developments in Afghanistan and said, "I am particularly concerned by accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan." Speaking to NBC News, Fawzia Koofi, a women's rights activist and former lawmaker, said, "Women in Afghanistan are the most at danger or most at-risk population of the country." 

Koofi was a member of the Afghan delegation that was working to negotiate peace with the Taliban before the US Miliary's withdrawal and she said women felt they have been betrayed. She added that the criminals who were released by the Taliban from prisons now pose an equal level of threat to women and said that the future for women in Afghanistan appears dark. In yet another shocking incident, the Taliban fighters had killed a woman, who was living with her three young sons and a daughter in a small village in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters had knocked on the door of the woman's house three days demanding her to cook food for fifteen fighters. However, the woman told them that she was poor and can't able to cook and the insurgents started beating her before her kids and they hit her with their guns and they left the place after throwing a grenade into the next room.

The woman, who was the mother of four, had died after the Taliban had beaten her. It was one of the incidents that the state of women under the Taliban regime won't be changed and they will be treated as slaves. The life of Afghan people and women would become shaky in the coming days even as the world is watching the events that are getting unfolded under the second Taliban regime and several countries had expedited the evacuation drive of evacuating their citizens from Afghanistan, leaving the Afghan people in peril and plight. It also must be noted that a handful of women had bravely protested in a square near the presidential palace near Kabul holding placards in front of the armed Taliban fighters demanding civic, social, and political freedoms. 

These brave girls protesting before the armed #Taliban in #Kabul for their rights.#AfghanWomen pic.twitter.com/fNlYYJbe45

— Nadia Momand (@NadiaMomand) August 17, 2021