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[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3663x2442+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb9%2F04%2Fddb5e2344323b8086e89be319725%2Fgettyimages-2232715498.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3663x2442+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb9%2F04%2Fddb5e2344323b8086e89be319725%2Fgettyimages-2232715498.jpg" class="img" alt="EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Afghan women and their children are pictured after earthquakes at Mazar Dara village in Nurgal district, Kunar province, in Eastern Afghanistan, on September 1, 2025. More than 800 people have died and over 2,700 were injured from August 31 night to September 1, 2025, in eastern Afghanistan after a 6-magnitude earthquake, followed by at least five aftershocks felt hundreds of kilometers away." fetchpriority="high"/> Afghan girls and their youngsters at Mazar Dara village after a 6-magnitude earthquake on August 31. Greater than 800 individuals have died and over 2,700 have been injured in jap Afghanistan from the quake and aftershocks. Wakil Kohsar/AFP/by way of Getty Pictures disguise caption

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Wakil Kohsar/AFP/by way of Getty Pictures As earthquakes devastated elements of Afghanistan in late August, Taliban officers requested help businesses to ship extra feminine well being employees to help feminine survivors. Additionally they briefly barred feminine U.N. staffers from reaching earthquake-devastated areas.

The flurry of contradictions within the wake of the earthquake didn't finish there.

Amid the aftermath, as help teams and Taliban bureaucrats have been helping these injured and left homeless by the earthquake, different Taliban officers twice suspended most web and mobile reception all through Afghanistan, complicating help efforts.

The incidents spotlight the contortions of the Taliban 4 years after seizing energy of Afghanistan.

Hardliners are firmly in management, however extra pragmatic factions look like consistently looking for workarounds to control — like urging feminine help employees to move to earthquake-struck zones.

"It is an ongoing wrestle," stated a senior analyst, who requested anonymity as a result of the Taliban has cracked down on individuals perceived as vital of them.

(That particular person, like greater than a dozen folks that NPR spoke to for this story, together with senior representatives of worldwide charities, native residents and revered analysts, requested that NPR not use their names. Others requested we solely use their first names. Among the individuals have been anxious their organizations could be punished in the event that they have been even perceived as being vital of the Taliban or have been involved about denials of visas for international employees or shedding the fitting to proceed operations.)

That to-and-fro could possibly be seen within the Taliban's response to the lethal earthquake, which was most devastating within the remoted mountains of the jap Kunar province in late August. Mud-and-stone properties clinging to steep mountainsides collapsed upon their sleeping inhabitants. From the vantage level of a helicopter, it appeared like whole villages "had simply been scraped off the edges of hills," stated Richard Trenchard, appearing humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

The U.N. estimates some 2,200 individuals have been killed and greater than 3,600 individuals have been injured. The bulk have been girls and ladies — partly as a result of there are extra females than males in any given inhabitants, as a result of the world is understood for males migrating to seek out work and since girls and ladies have been extra more likely to sleep inside constructions that collapsed.

The place have been the ladies? Within the first days after the earthquake struck, the Taliban shared a stream of movies of their protection forces choppering out the wounded from remoted villages. The wounded in these reels have been all males, as if the Taliban had landed in villages with no feminine inhabitants.

A neighborhood help employee, who goes by one identify, Wahidullah, informed NPR that ladies have been airlifted out, however in compliance with the Taliban's guidelines and cultural norms, they weren't filmed and have been segregated contained in the helicopter. One video, filmed by an area help group, by chance confirmed girls being rescued: They have been huddled behind one chopper, most clad in burkhas.

And two senior help employees stated Taliban officers inspired them to ship extra feminine employees to assist girls and ladies impacted by the earthquake due to Afghanistan's deeply conservative tradition that limits male contact with females, and the Taliban's personal guidelines that demand strict gender segregation. "They have been encouraging and requesting us to offer extra, significantly within the case of medical help to girls," stated Trenchard. One other senior help employee informed NPR, "The Taliban have been asking for girls medical doctors, they have been asking for feminine medical groups, all feminine medical groups. We did not have the sources accessible to provide."

The Taliban's request for extra girls employees got here regardless of the ratcheting restrictions that the group has been imposing since they seized energy 4 years in the past. That features stopping most ladies and ladies from research and work.

Who's behind the restrictions? Primarily based on NPR's reporting because the Taliban seized energy, these restrictions seem to have been ordered by the group's non secular chief. Hibatullah Akhundzada lives in near-total secrecy within the southern Afghan metropolis of Kandahar and infrequently makes public appearances. Analysts level to how the restrictions have held, regardless of high-level pushback by different distinguished clerics, and a number of makes an attempt on the bottom to sidestep the foundations.

That pushback included the previous deputy international minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai, who left Afghanistan in February after publicly criticizing the ban on ladies finding out past grade six a number of instances. The Taliban's first greater training minister turned a blind eye to girls attending college — even after a choice to let ladies attend highschool was dramatically rescinded in March 2022 — after ladies had been informed they may attend, and needed to be pushed out of lecture rooms. (By December 2022, the Taliban had stopped most ladies from attending college.)

After Afghan girls have been evicted from universities, the ministry of public well being appeared to push again, making a years-long nursing and midwifery course for Afghan girls so they may assist different girls. "It made hardliners uncomfortable," stated the analyst who spoke on situation of anonymity, who noticed it as "a workaround to our ban." The nursing and midwifery course was junked in December final 12 months, solely months after it started, apparently on the orders of the Taliban's supreme chief, Haibatullah Akhundzada. The transfer highlighted how "probably the most ultraconservative little bit of the motion is in management and is growing management," stated Kate Clark, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Community, a distinguished analysis group.

That growing management has come to the detriment of ladies and ladies. They're largely banned from being attended to by male medical doctors and medics. That is left girls's well being care within the palms of a diminishing variety of girls.

On the time, a distinguished researcher on Afghanistan, Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch, put it this manner: "In the event you ban girls from being handled by male well being care professionals, and then you definately ban girls from coaching to develop into well being care professionals, the results are clear: Ladies is not going to have entry to well being care and can die in consequence."

There isn't a country-wide information for Afghanistan, however it seems that not solely aren't any new girls coming by means of the Afghan well being care system, there are fewer certified girls nonetheless working. Some look like leaving Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Analysts Community, additionally reported others have been leaving amid plummeting salaries and deteriorating circumstances. The community additionally reported feminine well being employees saying that their newer colleagues have been more likely to be unskilled girls who got here from Taliban-loyal households.

Why help employees confronted obstacles The shortage of certified feminine employees grew to become one of many many obstacles that help employees grappled with as they sought to succeed in the lifeless and wounded hours after the earthquake devastated elements of Afghanistan on September 1.

One other impediment hindering the rescue of ladies was that the Taliban prevented feminine U.N. employees from reaching devastated areas. In a September 11, assertion, the U.N. additionally stated Afghanistan's Taliban rulers had prevented feminine U.N. staffers and contractors from coming into their workplaces within the capital Kabul, the western metropolis of Herat and the northern metropolis of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Trenchard, the appearing U.N. humanitarian coordinator, stated Taliban authorities did in the end enable girls working for the U.N. to help earthquake victims within the subject after negotiations, however they haven't been allowed to return to their places of work. Taliban authorities didn't reply to a number of requests for remark.

All this meant that few feminine help employees have been accessible to deal with girls and ladies injured by the earthquakes. Even to succeed in them, help employees walked for hours on perilous roads on steep mountainsides. One feminine rescuer informed the U.N.'s information service how they have been "dodging falling rocks each time there was an aftershock." The feminine well being employees have been anticipated to stroll in headscarves and lengthy free robes. Additionally they wanted a mahram, a male guardian — a person associated by blood whom a girl can not marry, like a brother or nephew, or her personal husband. That mahram needs to be licensed by the Taliban.

Help employees stated it was onerous to entice their feminine employees to move to devastated areas, partly as a result of their mahrams didn't wish to go, and partly as a result of the circumstances have been so daunting. In consequence, there have been initially few girls accessible to assist different girls, stated Gharshin, a 50-year-old well being employee who goes by just one identify. She stated feminine help employees within the subject did they finest they may, together with one midwife who trekked six hours to assist a girl give start.

In some circumstances, it seems that girls who have been injured within the earthquake have been left unattended, till feminine well being employees arrived. Help employees stated it wasn't simply the Taliban's prohibitions on males treating girls. Native communities additionally didn't enable males, whether or not rescuers or medics, to assist their feminine family. "They have been very strict and didn't enable us to even see the wounded," stated Omid Haqjo, a volunteer who hiked 9 hours to help in an space often called the Mazar Dara Valley. He stated it was a devastating sight, as a result of "many of the injured have been youngsters and ladies."

Some girls and ladies had not acquired any well being care, even two weeks after the earthquake, stated help employee, Fereshteh, who had been assigned to assist females shifted to tents after their properties have been destroyed.

Gharshin, the 50-year-old well being employee, stated what pissed off her was that the conservative Afghan traditions — alongside the Taliban's guidelines — meant that ladies couldn't be attended to besides by different girls. "Think about," she stated, over the last earthquake, "that ladies's garments got here off, or perhaps their garments have been torn. They might be in a state of affairs the place it's tough for a male rescuer to dare to choose her up. So it's pure that there needs to be a girl doing the rescuing."

Why did the web go down? But when there was any hope that Taliban authorities may loosen up their prohibitions on girls finding out, if solely to assist different girls, it was dashed simply two weeks after the earthquake struck.

On September 15, Taliban authorities rolled out a suspension of operations of the fiber optic cable that gives reasonably priced and quick web to most Afghans. The transfer was to "forestall evil," in keeping with Haji Zaid, spokesperson for the northern metropolis of Balkh. However one of many casualties was the 1000's of ladies and ladies, who have been finding out on-line after being denied bodily entry to high school.

Entry was resumed in most locations, till it was shut down once more for 48 hours on September 29, alongside cell mobile reception.

Through the first web suspension, one father described to NPR how his daughters have been quiet, pale and withdrawn after the web was minimize off. They have been finding out by means of an internet college. He requested anonymity for the security of his daughters. "It is the identical frustration," he stated of 4 years underneath the Taliban, "and the identical darkness."