✍️ By Ephraim Agbo
It started quietly.
A few rules here and there.
Dress codes tightened.
School gates shut.
Women stopped showing up at work.
And soon, they stopped showing up—anywhere at all.
Now, nearly four years after the Taliban reclaimed control of Afghanistan, the world’s top criminal court has stepped in.
On July 8, 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for two of the most powerful Taliban figures:
- Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the group’s reclusive Supreme Leader
- Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the Chief Justice of the Taliban’s court system
The accusation?
That they led a deliberate, calculated campaign to erase women and girls from Afghan public life.
🚫 What Exactly Are They Accused Of?
According to the ICC, since August 2021, the Taliban has:
- Banned over 1.4 million girls from attending secondary school and universities
- Forced women out of nearly all government and NGO jobs
- Barred them from traveling alone
- Closed access to parks, gyms, and even beauty salons
- Detained and abused women for so-called “moral” violations
- Created a system that criminalizes female visibility, ambition, and independence
These actions weren’t isolated or reactive—they were, according to the court, planned policies, written into law and enforced with threats, arrests, and sometimes bullets.
⚖️ What the ICC Actually Did
This is the first time in history that the ICC is pursuing a case centered solely on the persecution of women and girls. Not as a side charge. Not buried in footnotes. But as the main crime.
The court says the Taliban’s top leaders oversaw a system of gender-based persecution amounting to crimes against humanity.
Let that sink in:
A global court is calling Afghanistan’s treatment of women not just oppressive—but criminal.
📉 What This Looks Like on the Ground
These aren’t just headlines. These are lives disrupted—millions of them.
Here’s what’s happened under Taliban rule:
- More than 80% of Afghan girls have been forced out of formal education. That’s roughly 2.5 million students.
- Women who were once doctors, teachers, judges, engineers, and journalists have been stripped of their jobs.
- Laws now prohibit women from stepping outside without a male relative.
- Women’s rights activists have been beaten, imprisoned, or simply disappeared.
- Over 100 decrees and edicts have been issued restricting women’s daily lives—making them legally invisible.
And while the Taliban calls this "protecting culture," survivors are calling it daily suffocation.
🧭 But Here’s the Dilemma
The ICC isn’t Afghan. It wasn’t elected by the Afghan people.
It represents a global set of rules—and not everyone agrees with how those rules should apply.
The Taliban calls the arrest warrants a political move, an insult to their religious and cultural values.
They say they are simply restoring “order” and guarding tradition.
So we’re left asking:
When does “governing” cross the line into persecution?
And who gets to decide when that line has been crossed?
🌍 What Happens Now?
Let’s be honest: the chances of these men showing up in court are slim.
They rarely travel.
They don’t recognize the ICC’s authority.
And Afghanistan’s current rulers are not handing anyone over.
But that doesn’t mean the court’s action is meaningless.
What this decision does is set a precedent:
That systematic exclusion of women from public life can trigger global accountability.
That erasing women isn't just a local issue—it’s a global one.
It also opens the door for future prosecutions, documentation, and pressure.
And, most importantly, it tells Afghan women: We see you. We hear you.
💬 A Final Thought
This isn’t just about Afghanistan.
It’s about whether we, as a global community, still have the courage to say: enough.
Because silence, too, is a policy.
And for the past few years, far too many have been silent while Afghan women have been shoved into the shadows.
So now the question is no longer whether harm was done—
But whether we’re willing to hold anyone accountable for it.
If you think this conversation matters, share it. Talk about it.
Because the most dangerous kind of disappearance… is the one no one notices.
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