TRUE OR FAKE. Return of the Taliban to Afghanistan: is this viral photo of students in mini-skirts reproduced – franceinfo

Afghan women “will be able to work, study and (…) be actively involved in daily life”. This is the promise made by the spokesperson of the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, during a press conference, Tuesday August 17 in Kabul, after the capture of the capital.. But this commitment is already contradicted by the facts. In the territories controlled by the fundamentalist Islamist group, the rights of women are called into question: education prohibited after the age of 7, forced marriages, ban on individual movements … Afghan women contacted by franceinfo fear their freedoms. reduced to nothing by the new power.

>> Find the latest information on the arrival to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in our direct

To illustrate this concern, many Internet users have relayed the same photograph on social networks. A photograph showing three young Afghan women wearing mini-skirts and walking in a street in Kabul in 1972. “Golden age”, comments one of these Internet users, who presents himself as a teacher of philosophy. But is this image representative of the lives of Afghan women in the 1970s? Is its use for comparison with Afghanistan under Taliban rule relevant?

GOLDEN AGE
Three women walk the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, 1972.
A thought for all those who today will have to fight to keep or regain their right to freedom to live as they wish. Simply. pic.twitter.com/Q0FYHrU0od

– Kant must go … (@ sirius1936) August 15, 2021

This photo is authentic. It appears in the agency’s catalog Getty Images. The picture was taken in 1972 in Afghanistan. The legend confirms that we see “young students wearing mini skirts walking in the street” in Kabul, more precisely “in the neighborhood of Chahr-e-Nao“, the “new city”, which concentrates supermarkets, hotels and banks, north of the historic city center.

But the description of the image specifies that at the time, only “some emancipated girls wear the mini-skirt” and that they dare to do it “despite fierce criticism from the majority of Afghans, still attached to Muslim traditions”. Virulent criticism, but also physical violence, adds the comment accompanying the photo: “The mullahs, Muslim clerics, do not hesitate to throw acid on the bare legs of young emancipated girls.”

This image was taken by Swiss photographer Laurence Brun, as part of a report on “the living conditions of Afghan women in the 1970s”, entitled “Afghan women between tradition and modernity”, precise Calames, the online catalog of higher education archives and manuscripts, on which the series of forty images can be consulted.

Other pictures taken from this photostory confirm that in 1972, in this Afghan kingdom which would become a republic a year later, you could meet in a street in Kabul both a woman wearing a mini-skirt in Western fashion as well as a others dressed in a burqa, a full veil.

This shot of three Afghan women in mini-skirts in Kabul is in no way representative of the situation of Afghan women in the 1970s, comments Alex Shams, doctoral student in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago (United States) and author. of an essay on this photograph (article in English). “The dress style adopted by these young women was confined to the affluent streets of Kabul and to those who had access to education and opportunities. Their numbers were then extremely limited.”, explains the academic.

“There was a tolerance for a whole variety of different lifestyles”, explained Heather Barr, researcher for the NGO Human Rights Watch, to the American media CheckYourFact* in 2017. “But there were also a lot of women in the 1960s and 1970s – even in urban areas – whose lives were more governed by purdah, and who didn’t go out to study, didn’t go out to work.” Purdah is an Islamic practice that prevents men from seeing women and forces women to cover their bodies in order to hide their forms.

A reality then lived more by the rural areas of the country, very conservative. However, at the time of this shooting, Afghan cities only concentrate 12.41% of the population, against 26% in 2020, reports the world bank*.

Using this photograph for comparison is therefore a mistake, according to Alex Shams. “The freedom to wear whatever clothes you choose is an integral part of freedom, but it is not its only component. Feminism cannot be reduced to a choice of dress.”, comments the researcher. Within the Afghan monarchical regime which disappeared in 1973, “the vast majority of women did not have access to education or a job outside of their home”, notes the doctoral student in sociocultural anthropology.

Conversely, and all the more since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, “Many women fought for their rights in many parts of society, went to university and found jobs.” In 2009, 24.8% of Afghan university students were female students, reports LakeUnited Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (in PDF *). In 2019, 21.8% of Afghan women over 15 were also employed, against 15% in 2001 when the Taliban fell, according to the international labor organization*.

“Today, a lot of Afghan women wear the veil and go to university, but these photos do not circulate as much.”

Alex shams

doctoral student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Chicago

The use of this photo has also not been without consequence in recent history. In 2017, it was precisely this cliché that US President Donald Trump’s military adviser used to convince him to keep US troops in Afghanistan, “to show him that Western standards had existed there before, and could make a comeback”, reported the Washington post*. The cliché had then already been widely shared on social networks, noted BuzzFeed*.

Doctoral student Alex Shams points to a “political instrumentalisation” misleading, which does not “what to oppose Islam to Western civilization”. “It makes believe that the rights of women were acquired thanks to the West, which would symbolize the wearing of these mini-skirts, academic analysis. But this erases the fact that Afghan women themselves fought for their own rights and to change society. “

* These links refer to articles or documents in English.