In urban areas, no one opposed the changes, not even the mullahs of Kabul. But in the tribal areas, Amanullah’s measures, such as reducing the powers of religious judges, were seen as an existential threat.

Rumours began to circulate that the king had converted to Catholicism, and photos of the French president kissing the queen’s hand, bare-armed. In 1929. Revolting tribes advanced on the capital.
Amanullah abdicated on January 14, leaving the country in anarchy. He died in Zurich in 1960. Professor Ahmed-Ghosh points out that 1928, women in rural areas  – where 95 percent of Afghans lived – “did not benefit from modernization,” because tribal and religious leaders opposed any attempt to change the status quo.
The final straw was the decision to impose a minimum age for marriage for men and women, 18 and 21 respectively, but also compulsory education and the abolition of polygamy.

Syadara. Men in a village. Any attempt to change the status quo was resisted by tribal and religious leaders. Shutterstock/Jono Photography

The king also revoked some policies (he accepted the closure of girls’ schools), but in vain. This was “because women’s rights in Afghanistan had always been limited by the patriarchal nature of social and gender relations deeply rooted in traditional communities, and because a weak central state was never able to impose itself on tribal feudalism,” explains sociologist Valentine M. Moghadam.
Over the next two decades, the Afghan throne passed through several families and monarchs, such as the Tajik Amir Habibullah II, who reigned for nine months and ended all equality laws, or Nadir Shah, who announced a new constitution with reforms favourable to women.

Mohammad Zahir Shah. He was the last King of Afghanistan, reigning from 8 November 1933 until he was deposed on 17 July 1973.

Although he avoided antagonizing the mullahs and tribal leaders, Nadir Shah would be assassinated in 1933, succeeded by Zahir Shah.
Mohammad Daoud Khan, Zahir’s prime minister, believed that women could contribute – voluntarily – to national development. Wearing or not wearing the veil was a choice. By 1959, Professor Dupree notes, there had been “considerable progress,” with “excellent schools” preparing women for a variety of careers: in all the ministries, in the police, the army, in commerce and in industry.
In 1965, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PPDA), a Marxist group supported by the Soviet Union, was created, and from it emerged the Democratic Organization of the Women of Afghanistan (DOAW), led by Anahita Ratebzad, a communist militant and one of the first women members of the Afghan parliament.  In 1977, the most important women’s institution, the Jamiat-e Inqalabi Zanan-e Afghanistan (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) or RAWA, was founded by Meena Keshwar Kamal, a law student determined to fight for “equality and social justice, secular government and religious freedom for all”.

Anahita Ratebzad, was the first woman member of the Afghan parliament. Courtesy of Ratebzad Family via X

An independent young woman, married to a Maoist doctor whose ideology she did not share and who encouraged her to disobey traditions, she turned the burqa, which she did not wear, into a weapon for women to act in secret. “Anonymous, they seemed obedient, but they were rebels.” RAWA did not limit itself to challenging tribal leaders and Soviet invaders, but also the Mujahideen and the Taliban, even after Meena was assassinated at the age of 30 in 1987 in Quetta, Pakistan. In this neighbouring country, she created embroidery workshops for millions of Afghan refugee women and children and a network of schools where “literacy and democracy” are still learned, as activist Roya, who like others in the organization
uses a pseudonym, says.

Meena Keshwar Kamal was a women’s rights activist and founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). She was killed in 1987. Facebook

Meena’s last project was the Malalai Hospital, where doctors and nurses “encourage patients to learn about their human rights.” RAWA emerged at a time when conservatives were rejecting the requirement to educate girls as “an untenable interference in domestic life” and “a challenge to male authority.” On the streets of Kabul, women with painted lips and miniskirts were even attacked with acid. The disciples of the “heroine and martyr” Meena were accused of being “lesbians and prostitutes.”
The sociologist Valentine Moghadam refers to cases where “girls were killed.” Interestingly, Professor Ahmed-Ghosh says, “It was during this turbulent pro-Soviet regime” that women “went to the centre stage: they filled universities, they worked in companies and airlines, they were doctors; but for the nation as a whole, it was a time of destruction.”
In 1978, rising tensions led to a widespread rebellion. The following year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in support of the besieged communist government. The tribal leaders formed their own army (mujahideen) and waged a guerrilla war with funding and weapons from the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China that would kill more than a million civilians.
The invaders withdrew in 1989, but instead of peace, Afghanistan descended into a bloody civil war, with the same groups that had banded together to defeat the USSR now fighting each other.
In the early 1990s, taking advantage of the chaos and promising to “restore order”, the Taliban emerged. They controlled 75% of the territory, including the capital, from 1996 to 2001, when they were overthrown by US and NATO troops for harbouring al-Qaeda. They fought another war for two decades and succeeded in resurrecting their “Islamic emirate” four years ago.

Nargis Nehan, founder of the organization Equality for Peace and Democracy. Facebook

Despite the withdrawal of foreign military personnel in 2021, the support of non-governmental organizations and international institutions (now absent) has helped create “a real women’s movement”, which, inside and outside Afghanistan, continues to resist Taliban rule, assures Nargis Nehan, founder of the organization EQUALITY for Peace and Democracy.
It has therefore been a long journey, as Nancy Dupree has shown: “Afghan women never fought for their cause. They left their homes and took off their veils, because the men who led the country decreed it. A constitution gave them the right to vote and the right to education. A government and a parliament dominated by men guaranteed all these rights. But it was also a male-dominated society that took away women’s rights.” (Open Photo: Mountain scenery between Kabul and Bamyan (Bamiyan) in Afghanistan. A dusty road to a remote village. Shutterstock/Jono Photography)

M.S.L.