Why is an American Feminist Defending the Taliban?
By Zahra Nader, the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
Cheryl Benard’s recent commentary on the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghan refugees has outraged many Afghans. She argues that Afghanistan is not perfect, not “the Riviera,” but “improved,” “stabilized,” and most importantly, safe enough for 8,000 Afghan refugees to be forced back under the U.S. government’s new mass deportation policy.
She shows her mild disapproval of the ban on education for girls, yet claims the private schools are “permitted to operate at any level.” (I am not sure where she got her information, but we have reported in December 2022 that Taliban banned private educational centres, including private schools for girls beyond grade six.) Perhaps, she might mean madrasas are open in “any level” to brainwash the next generation of Afghans. When Cheryl Benard suggests Afghan girls can attend private schools if public ones are closed, her words echo Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake” — but with a sharper cruelty, since she is a visitor.
Benard compares the Taliban’s treatment of women to the situation in India, arguing that gender-based violence in India is more extreme and yet India remains internationally accepted. She cites examples like dowry deaths and gang rapes in India to suggest that international condemnation of the Taliban’s policies is selectively applied and perhaps unfair. She does not mention Taliban’s policies of gender apartheid, those edicts and laws that aim to systematically erase women from public life. If the statistics on violence against women elsewhere can justify systematic oppression of women in Afghanistan, she can give the example of America, where every day at least three women are murdered by a current or former intimate partner.
In her attempt to defend the deportation of Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan, Benard offers “reassurance” to the Taliban critics. But what she offers is propaganda. It’s the soft-voiced rationalization of the Taliban regime from someone whose family helped shape the political conditions that empowered this brutal regime.
Benard calls herself a feminist. But what type of feminism dismisses the fear of Afghan women living under the Taliban as “histrionic”? What kind of feminist points to a few saleswomen in Kabul as proof that things aren’t so bad for an estimated 20 million women and girls whom the Taliban have systematically banned from education, work, travel, and even visits to clinics without a male chaperone? What kind of feminist gives herself the audacity to speak for women whose oppressors she is trying hard to legitimize? This isn’t feminism. It’s imperial gaslighting from someone who earns a living from the military-industrial complex.
She claims Afghanistan is “stabilizing.” Yes, because those who used to kill people daily are now in charge, and those who could resist have been imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared. When a terrorist group monopolizes the source of violence, then of course, things look calm. And yes, the calm that Benard and some tourists might experience in Kabul is not the reality for Afghan people, especially women. While Benard, as a white woman and the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, the man who negotiated the Taliban’s return to power, is respected, protected, and can move freely around the city, millions of Afghan women are denied the right to simply exist in public. Last month, we reported how women were arrested, tortured, and publicly flogged for going to a clinic with a male cousin or for sitting in a cafe. Last year, we reported how the Taliban have raped some of the women who were forced to beg on the streets. These brutal realities didn’t make it into her piece about “stabilized” Afghanistan.
I understand that Benard would likely never read our reporting, because to her, we are just a group of “histrionic” women, supposedly exaggerating the reality of life under the Taliban regime. How convenient. But what about the reports from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan? From the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights? From Human Rights Watch? From Amnesty International? They all document that the Taliban are committing crimes against humanity. But to Benard, these must also be overdramatizations. She ignores the Taliban’s crimes entirely not because she doesn’t know, but because they disrupt the narrative she is trying hard to sell.
Benard doesn’t just get Afghanistan wrong, she erases the voices of the very women she claims to advocate for. Let’s talk about those women she saw working on the streets of Kabul. Yes, there are women trying to earn a living. These women are not working with the Taliban’s permission, they are working in defiance of the Taliban’s rules. They are doing what they can to survive, to feed their children, to carve out scraps of dignity under a regime that wants them erased. What she doesn’t say is that thousands of women have been removed from public employment, including recently women professors. Even hundreds of thousands of women who worked in entirely female-dominated professions such as bakeries, women’s bathhouses, and beauty salons have been banned from working. Just to give you one example, 60,000 women across the country lost their livelihoods due to the closure of 12,000 beauty salons by the order of the Taliban. Most of these women were the breadwinners of their families and came from marginalized communities.
And Kabul is not Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in most parts of Afghanistan even these minimal opportunities to resist do not exist. And we should remember that Kabul is where the Taliban are willing to perform tolerance for visitors like Benard, whose presence is useful to them. The Taliban know exactly what they’re doing: they allow women like Cheryl Benard to come in, take their curated tours, and return home to write glowing editorials that help whitewash their crimes and normalize their rule.
Judging by her piece, Cheryl Benard and her husband are apparently the only ones doing the right thing for Afghanistan, without any interest in money or influence! How ironic, considering she is writing an entire piece to normalize a brutal regime and dismiss the systematic suffering of millions.
If it were up to the Afghan people, the Taliban wouldn’t rule. The Taliban’s rise to power was facilitated by Benard’s husband. Khalilzad’s deal in Doha gave them everything: legitimacy, a timeline, and no commitment to women’s rights. Even now, she refuses to acknowledge that it was her husband who negotiated the Taliban’s return to power. Afghan people, especially Afghan women were never consulted. Our future was decided by men in suits, far from our streets. And now Cheryl Benard has the audacity to explain to us that it’s really not so bad.
Benard’s article is not analysis. It is an act of selective sight, a distortion crafted to comfort Western policymakers who want to feel good about engaging with the Taliban and legitimizing their regime. It cherry-picks anecdotes, misrepresents data, and silences the very women she pretends to defend.
Cheryl Benard, we don’t need your reassurance. We don’t need your travel stories. And we certainly don’t need another round of imperialist feminists explaining that the people who oppress us aren’t really so bad because they smiled at you while they have stripped us of our rights and freedoms.
If the U.S. government chooses to send thousands of Afghans back into the hands of a regime that strips us of our rights, freedoms, and dignity, then do it but don’t pretend it’s for our good. And please, spare us the lecture of women like Cheryl Benard, who claim to know our country better than we do.
