Afghan women fear that the price of peace will be their freedom

It is naïve to think that the Taliban has changed attitudes to women's rights, said Kabul restaurateur Laila Haidari, who, like many educated Afghan women, fears that an agreement will be reached. of peace between extremists and the United States does not undermine hard-won freedoms.

The draconian rules that once forced half of the population to hide – prohibiting education and work – have been eradicated in the two decades since the US-led invasion that swept the Taliban out of power.

"If they come back, women will have to leave the public space," Ms. Haidari told the restaurant she runs in Kabul, one of the few places in the capital where men and women dine together.

Haidari has launched the #metooafghanistan movement, which itself and others hope it will be the vanguard of Afghan women and stand up to Taliban power.

"We never want to go back in. We never want to lose our freedom," said Mina Rezaee, owner of another coffee shop in Kabul, where music – banned under the Taliban – is playing in the background.

After six days of negotiations in Qatar, the United States and the Taliban have agreed on a draft framework for an agreement that could allow insurgents to hold peace talks with Kabul.

With the United States desperate to withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban controlling vast areas of the country, it is unclear what a post-conflict government would look like.

Taliban participation, however, scares many women.

Before being overthrown by the 2001 US invasion, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for nearly five years with a strict interpretation of Sharia law.

"We still remember how difficult it was to be a woman under the Taliban regime," said Naweeda Bayat, a 25-year-old woman from Jaghori Central District.

"I was a child, but I remember that they burned our school before our eyes."

According to an American estimate, the Kabul government controls less than two-thirds of the country and nothing has changed in the Taliban-controlled areas.

"They have either set fire to girls' schools or prevented women from working," said Bayat. "It tells us how they could be coming back."

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Afghan women have even more reason to be worried if they are "excluded from the negotiation process, as they have been for the most part," said Heather Barr, senior researcher on women's rights.

"The attitude of the Taliban towards women has been slightly subdued since 2001, but there is still a million kilometers of equal rights granted to women under the Afghan constitution," he says. she observe.

The position of women in Afghanistan has undeniably improved since 2001.

According to the UN, more than 2.5 million of the eight million schoolchildren are girls. More than a quarter of the seats in Parliament are reserved for women and in 2016 they accounted for almost one-fifth of the membership.

Despite the progress made – and the millions of dollars spent by Western aid programs since 2001 – Afghanistan ranks last in the Georgetown Institute for Women Index, Peace and Security, which measures well-being and self-sufficiency.

The fears of educated women in the capital are shared by those in rural areas, where the literacy rate can be less than 2% and the rights are often even more limited by the conservative tradition.

Hasina, 32, mother of a child in the controversial province of Helmand, in the south of the country, says she fears recoil.

"We are worried and fear for our lives," she says.

"If the Taliban come back and forbid schools for my children or do not let me out without my husband, that will not be acceptable to me," says Nazia Rezaee, 35, in downtown Ghazni. .

Afghan women "have changed"

Several feminist activists told AFP that they thought the country had changed and that Afghan women would not allow their rights to be removed without a fight.

"Afghan women are stronger, more knowledgeable, more educated than ever, and no one, not even men, will agree to return to what Afghanistan was in 1998," said Fawzia Koofi, president of the United Nations. Parliamentary Committee on Women and Human Rights.

Activist Attia Mehraban has the same feeling. "I dream of peace, like millions of other Afghans, but I dream more clearly of my freedom and my rights as a human being of the 21st century," she said at the conference. 39; AFP.

"The price of peace can not be unlimited."

Her message to the Taliban, she said, is: "Afghan women have changed, if you think you can come back with the same ideology … you're wrong, you'll have to face a formidable force of women well educated Afghans are aware of their rights and will not give in to oppression ".

Hosai Andar, a businesswoman in her forties, said she could not "imagine that the world would abandon us again".

"I am an optimist," she told AFP. "They will stay with us."

(This story has not been changed by NDTV staff and is generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)