#DoNotTouchMyClothes: Afghan Women Protest Taliban Restrictions on Rights
The New York Times
A social media campaign within the Afghan diaspora celebrates pre-Taliban dress traditions, and mourns the loss of that freedom.
This summer, Bahar Jalali watched anxiously as the United States withdrew its military from Afghanistan and the Taliban began to reassert control over the country. Women were told to stay home and to cover themselves — an early indicator that other rights, protections and services for women would soon be eliminated, including, this week, the right to attend Kabul University.
Ms. Jalali, a visiting associate professor at Loyola University Maryland, is a member of the Afghan diaspora — born in Kabul, raised in the United States, but connected still to her home country, where she returned in 2009 to teach at the American University of Afghanistan. She left again in 2016 after surviving a violent attack at the university by the Taliban.
When reports surfaced this summer that, with the Taliban takeover, Afghan women were shredding their education degrees and that safe houses for women were closing their doors, she was distraught.
