‘If You Don’t Have Money, You Have Sisters’: Afghan Men Use Taliban Rule to Settle Scores

A week after the Taliban swept to power in August, a businessman who had become an official in Afghanistan’s new government turned up at Ayesha’s home. He demanded the family hand over Ayesha and her four sisters to repay what he said was a $250,000 debt owed by her brother.

The women would be married to the man and his sons, he said. “If you don’t have money, you have sisters,” the man told them, according to Ayesha, who asked to be identified only by her first name.

Now, Ayesha, who studied journalism as a university student, and her family are hiding in a safe house arranged by an aid worker. “I will never accept marrying a Talib,” Ayesha said. “If he catches us, we will lose our future.”

The Taliban leadership says it respects women’s rights, within what it sees as the correct framework of Islam. The government, intent on wooing the international community and gaining recognition from foreign capitals, hasn’t formally changed laws to significantly curb women’s freedoms.

In practice, however, women’s rights have deteriorated sharply, women and human-rights groups say, in part because the Taliban’s central leadership exercises limited authority over individual members, who enforce their own views of what they consider proper Islamic behavior and traditional norms.

Forced “marriages” to Taliban members—which can often amount to kidnapping and rape, women say—have occurred frequently in recent months. Ayesha’s mother said surrendering her daughters for marriage to the businessman would be akin to giving them up as “slaves.”

Qari Saeed Khosti, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said marrying a woman against her will is prohibited, and that any such marriage under duress would be considered void according to the Islamic Shariah. “It’s not allowed in Islam,” he said. “You’d be committing adultery.”

In traditional Afghan culture, however, if a woman has had sex with another man, even unwillingly, she would often have a hard time ever finding a spouse.

As a child, Ayesha dressed in boys’ clothes to evade social norms that would keep her mostly at home. She cut her hair, called herself Khalid—a male name—and played soccer with boys. She rode bikes and climbed trees “like a monkey,” she remembers.

Now in hiding, her world has shrunk to the size of the safe house. “Every time someone passes by in the street, or knocks the gate outside, we think that he has found us,” Ayesha said.

Ayesha’s brother has left his now-estranged family to deal with the debt, her mother said.

“We’ve run out of options. How can we pay off $250,000? It’s a lot of money,” Ayesha’s mother said. She said she refused to hand over her daughters. “All my life I have worked hard to raise them to be independent.”

The Taliban conquest of Afghanistan prompted an almost immediate change in societal norms in the capital that have pushed Afghan women out of the workplace, away from public view and into seclusion at home.

The face of Afghan cities, particularly Kabul, has become more somber. Coffee shops in the capital that used to cater to young people of both genders, and to couples, have largely emptied out. Amusement parks are almost exclusively visited by men.

Taliban officials use a manual, originally from the late 1990s and reissued in 2020, as guidance for regulating the moral behavior of Afghans. The manual describes strict rules, particularly for girls and women, but encourages Taliban members to enforce them “kindly.”

“The manual also says that everyone should respect the rights of women, including the right not to be forced into marriage. But the Taliban, by closing girls’ secondary schools and imposing tough new restrictions on women attending universities, have greatly heightened the risk of forced marriage,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s-rights director at Human Rights Watch.

Some women have hastily married friendly relatives or family friends as the lesser of two evils. As the Taliban crept closer to the western Afghan city of Herat this summer, Hoda Raha feared that the militants, once in power, would claim her.

In early August, a week before the Taliban arrived at the city’s gates, Ms. Raha’s mother married her off to a family friend—to keep her safe, she said. “We’re like a trophy for them.” Ms. Raha said. “They say, ‘We have been warriors for 20 years. This is our right.’”

Ms. Raha, 27 years old, said swiftly arranged marriages, often with relatives, have become a means for survival for many Afghan women across the country, who after the Taliban’s return to power have established support groups on messaging apps.

“I, as a woman, am not a human to a Talib. I’m a thing,” Ms. Raha said. “I have to do anything they want. If I don’t obey, they can do anything to me.”