Maria ToorpakaiWazir

In Afghanistan, misogyny is not an accident. It is the system. For decades, men have held the power, written the rules, set the agendas, and appointed themselves the experts on women's lives. Women were brought in as symbols, tokens on a panel, faces in a photograph, while men profited from their suffering. That male dominance is what made the Taliban's oppression possible. The ground was already prepared: women already silenced, already excluded, already spoken for. And many of the same men who built that ground offered almost no real resistance when the Taliban took it to its brutal conclusion. Now something has shifted. Afghan women are gaining recognition, resources, and influence on the international stage, and they are doing it without asking men for permission, without going through them, without needing them as mediators. And that terrifies them. So suddenly, the corrupt have discovered accountability. The incompetent have declared themselves experts on women's rights. The most divisive among them are digging up ethnic and linguistic differences to break women's solidarity. Let us be clear about what this is. It is not about accountability. It is not about women's rights. It is about losing a monopoly, over power, over resources, over the ability to profit from women's pain. They are afraid of Afghan women becoming powerful and independent. Different faces, same misogyny, same obsession with controlling women. In this, they are no different from the Taliban. And we see them.