For Sahar, the year 2022 could not have ended worse: on December 24, she received a WhatsApp message from one of her colleagues sharing the latest Taliban decree.

The latter evokes "serious complaints concerning the non-respect of the wearing of the hijab" and demands from "all national and international organizations to no longer collaborate with women".

In the event of refusal to submit to these new rules, recalcitrant NGOs will have their license revoked, which allows them to carry out their activities in Afghanistan.

The shock is immense for the 24-year-old humanitarian worker.

"I started crying without being able to stop," says the young woman, whose name and that of her organization will not be mentioned for security reasons.

"I never imagined this would happen. That day I lost my most important right: to work." 

With this decree, the Taliban are once again regressing women's rights in Afghanistan, but this decision is also proving to be catastrophic on the socio-economic level.

Sahar was the only one who could provide for the needs of the nine members of her family.

"All the men in the family lost their jobs. I was the only one who could pay for the rent, food, medicine and education for my younger brothers."

While the whole world has just celebrated the transition to the new year with luminous fireworks, Afghanistan, on the contrary, plunges a little more into obscurantism.

The myth of a more modern and pragmatic "Taliban 2.0", constructed during the Doha negotiations with the United States, has largely been shattered in recent months.

The Taliban now seem determined to ruin the lives of their fellow citizens and eradicate women from the public sphere.   

Kabul Taliban vs. Kandahar Taliban

Faced with this situation, anger is rising within the population and spontaneous demonstrations are increasing despite the risk of repression.

More importantly, signs of divisions within the Taliban are increasingly coming to light. 

According to several well-informed sources, the ban on Afghan women working for NGOs would indeed have inflamed tensions within the movement.

"This decision represents the opinion of a minority among the Taliban. The majority, even among the leaders of the movement, is opposed to this measure", affirms from Washington Zalmay Khalilzad, the former special envoy of the United States in Afghanistan, in the front line in 2020 during the Doha negotiations with the Taliban.

Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sign a peace agreement in Doha, Qatar, February 29, 2020. © Hussein Sayed, AP

Born and raised in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad left his post as special envoy in 2021 but remains in close contact with Taliban officials.

"I have had contact with them in the past and I continue to speak to them today and they are largely opposed to this decision," he said. 

According to experts, the movement is crossed by a fault line between moderate Taliban and an ultra-conservative circle gathered around Hibatullah Akhunzada, a solitary emir of the city of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. 

Hibatullah Akhunzada in a video message sent during the Eid holiday.

© Afghan Islamic Press via AP

Nicknamed the "Kandaharis" or simply the "Shura", "the council", this Taliban old guard from the rural world hides behind the most controversial decrees of the Taliban such as the banishment of women from secondary schools and then from universities or their exclusion most jobs in the public service.

Since November, they are also no longer allowed to go to parks, gymnasiums and public baths. 

Ministers thanked

The first signs of division within the movement appeared in the spring of 2022 with the spectacular turnaround on the education of young girls.

At the end of March, the Taliban closed the doors of high schools and colleges to female students, just hours after a long-announced reopening.

A brutal decision which had caused scenes of distress among schoolgirls ready to return to school.

Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai then publicly displayed his disagreement during a televised speech broadcast during a meeting of Taliban cadres in Kabul. 

Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai at a press conference in Moscow, May 28, 2019. © Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP

The movement also seems to have dithered on women's access to universities.

After giving the green light on the condition of respecting a strict separation between girls and boys, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, then Minister of Higher Education was finally dismissed in October 2022. Two months later, his successor, the ultraconservative Nida Mohammad Nadim, prohibited women from entering university education.

>> To see on France24.com: in a clandestine school for girls in Kabul

Meanwhile, then Education Minister Noorullah Munir, who promised in September 2021 that women would be allowed to study, suffered a fate similar to that of Abdul Baqi Haqqani.

He was dismissed last year in favor of a close associate of the Kandahar "council" and the Emir Hibatullah Akhunzada.

"A powerful and influential minority gathered around the emir", analyzes Ahmed-Waleed Kakar, the founder of the media The Afghan Eye.

"The question now is whether these kinds of decisions can continue despite increasingly strong opposition within the population but also within the Taliban movement," he adds.

"I won't give up"

These divisions, however, have little chance of causing the Taliban to implode, according to Ahmed-Waleed Kakar.

"The Taliban are ideologically and religiously committed to obeying their leader, even when they disagree. The only time he could disobey is if their leader did something un-Islamic."

"I think the Taliban leaders need to come together and oppose this decision [banning Afghan women from working for NGOs]," said diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, who the Taliban he is in contact with say "understand " his point of view but call for "patience". "If they don't, they will alienate the Afghans.

Anger rises in public opinion and offers arguments to those who want to start a war.

This is not what the people want, nor what the Taliban want."

>> See also: "Westerns acted as if we could believe" the Taliban

While the Taliban beg for time, Afghan women sink into despair as one door after another closes.

From Kabul, Sahar worries about the financing of the project, for which she is responsible.

"We are preparing long-term projects and we were optimistic about obtaining funds," she explains.

"But with the Taliban's decision, donors are no longer so certain of continuing their funding."

But at the start of the year, Sahar refuses to give in to fatalism.

"I call on people around the world, donors, not to give up on Afghanistan. The situation is very tough but I will not give up. I remain optimistic for 2023. There will be better days. The women of Afghanistan will not be forgotten."

Article translated from English by Grégoire Sauvage.

The original can be read here.

The summary of the

France 24 week invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you!

Download the France 24 app