Explosive firsthand evidence of Taliban members engaging in “gang rape and torture” of an Afghan woman activist while she was in jail for participating in a public protest was published by the Guardian on July 3. This is the “first direct evidence” of horrifying jailhouse rapes that journalists and the U.S. government have warned about for more than a year.
The outlet said its journalists examined the video of the grim assault, which was taken by the victim’s armed aggressors. In the video, the young woman is told to undress on camera before being “raped multiple times by two men.” When she tries to cover her face, one assailant gives her a hard push. In another section of the video, a Talib tells her, “You’ve been f***ed by Americans all these years, and now it’s our turn.”
Talibs sent the video to their victim after she fled Afghanistan. They warned her they would send the video to her family or release it on social media if she continued speaking out against the Taliban.
The outlet's account follows on the heels of a June report that a young woman, arrested on charges of “bad hijab,” was sexually assaulted in Taliban prison. Another young woman was found dead in a water canal more than three weeks after a hijab-related arrest. Her body, bearing signs of torture and sexual abuse, was inside a pot.
Also in June, journalist Lynne O’Donnell revisited a May 2023 account from Hasht-e Subh Daily. The report states that Afghan women have been impregnated by Taliban members who raped them in prison. Pregnant detainees were “taken to hospital under Taliban armed guard” and forced to undergo abortions, O’Donnell wrote. Several prisoners became so ill after repeated sexual abuse, the report said, that they were “ultimately executed by the Taliban.”
It is suspected that the prisoners in the outlet's report were held by the Taliban general directorate of intelligence. The GDI recently urged subordinate groups “to avoid circulating videos, pictures, and voice recordings,” according to leaked documents released by Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary .
The report was featured in the State Department’s 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and is now the subject of an investigation by the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights.
The head of the Taliban's Doha Political Office, Suhail Shaheen, did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the proof that Afghan women are being raped in Taliban jails. Less than two weeks earlier, he told Fox News that prior allegations of women being raped in prisons were “a mere claim and accusation.”
Days before the outlet released its bombshell article, a Taliban delegation met with U.N. personnel and special envoys to Afghanistan for two days of discussions in Doha, Qatar. Afghan women were banned from attending the meetings, which commenced on June 30. Human rights activists castigated the choice to kowtow to the Taliban and neglect the gender apartheid that they say is being practiced against Afghan women.
While Western attendees at the meeting repeatedly stressed their intention to discuss the Taliban’s violations of Afghan women’s rights, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid emphasized on June 29 that “our meetings, such as the one in Doha or with other countries, have nothing to do with the lives of our sisters, nor will we allow them to interfere in our internal affairs.”
The Taliban have celebrated the fact that Western diplomats met their demands for two days of discussions. Mujahid applauded the “ spirit of cooperation ” in the meetings, telling attendees of a Kabul press conference that “Afghanistan has come out of isolation. An atmosphere of trust has been created.”
Tomas Niklasson, the European Union’s special envoy to Afghanistan, shared positive feedback about how participants found “a lot of common ground” with the Taliban in Doha.
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"Will that answer satisfy a girl who has been at home for 1,000 days and without a proper school?” Niklasson asked. “Probably not. But I think my realistic expectation for this meeting was also not that we were going to be able to fix that in three days.”
As proofs emerge of the horrors Afghan women are subjected to under Taliban rule, Western dithering over attempting diplomacy with Afghanistan’s de facto leaders is unacceptable. Talks with the mendacious Taliban must cease. The veil of legitimacy they provide is the perfect cover as the Taliban continuously predate upon the very people they claim to govern.
Beth Bailey ( @BWBailey85 ) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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