Afghanistan was struck by its third earthquake within just one week, killing over 2,200 people and injuring thousands more. The tragedy has not only flattened homes and destroyed villages but has also uncovered the brutal human suffering faced by women under Taliban rule. According to several reports, many women were left buried under rubble and allowed to die because male rescuers were prohibited from touching them.

Under the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, the rule of ‘no skin contact with unrelated males’ allows only a woman’s immediate male relatives—her father, husband, brother, or son—to touch her body. This practice turned into a deadly barrier during the rescue operations. In villages where female rescue workers are almost non-existent, saving women became nearly impossible. For years, Afghan women have been banned from pursuing medical education or taking part in public jobs, leaving communities with no female responders during emergencies.

The result was tragic. Women trapped beneath collapsed walls were often ignored, while men and children were rescued first. In some places, women had to wait for other women from nearby communities to arrive before they could be helped. In the worst cases, bodies of women were pulled out by grabbing their clothes, so rescuers could avoid making physical contact.

The survivors themselves recall the painful neglect. “They gathered us in one corner and forgot about us,” said Bibi Aysha, a survivor from Kunar Province, recalling how rescue teams arrived after more than 36 hours but offered no direct help to injured women.

Even volunteers confirmed the disturbing discrimination. A male volunteer, Tahzeebullah Muhazeb, told media that women appeared “invisible” during rescue operations. He described how male rescuers hesitated to pull out trapped women, fearing cultural backlash. “It felt like women were just invisible for the rescue teams,” he said.

This shows that the Taliban’s religious restrictions turned a natural disaster into an even bigger tragedy for Afghan women. Instead of being saved, they were left behind in the ruins, abandoned simply because their lives were considered less important than rigid rules.

Lack of women doctors leaves countless female patients without treatment

The suffering of Afghan women did not end at the rescue stage. Once taken to hospitals, they faced another crisis—medical neglect. Evidence from the earthquake-hit provinces shows the same trend everywhere: men and boys received quick medical care, while women were made to wait separately, often in pain and untreated.

Hospitals in many areas were overflowing with patients, but the shortage of female doctors made the situation worse. This gap in medical services is a direct result of Taliban restrictions. With women banned from higher education and barred from working in healthcare, hospitals across Afghanistan are left without enough female professionals to handle emergencies.

The United Nations has already warned about this inequality. Susan Ferguson, UN Women’s representative in Afghanistan, stressed: “Their needs must be at the heart of the response and recovery.” But the real situation on the ground shows that women remain on the margins, excluded from both rescue and aid.

Even the Taliban’s own Ministry of Health admitted that there were not enough female staff available, though they claimed women were serving in hospitals in the affected provinces. Survivors’ accounts tell a different story, pointing to an alarming shortage that left many women untreated.

This disaster has exposed a larger truth—Afghan women are suffering under some of the world’s harshest restrictions. For the past four years, the Taliban have imposed a rigid form of Sharia law that stripped women of education, work opportunities, and freedom of movement. Girls have been stopped from attending secondary schools and universities. Women have been forced out of NGOs and international organisations. They cannot travel without a male guardian, and even public spaces like parks and gyms have been closed to them.

So when disaster struck, Afghan women had no safety net—no female rescue workers, no female doctors, and no rights to demand equal care.

Taliban’s rigid Sharia rules have wiped Afghan women out of society

What happened in the earthquake response was not an accident. It was the outcome of four years of Taliban’s suffocating control. Their interpretation of Sharia law has one goal—to make women invisible.

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, Afghan women have been pushed out of schools, jobs, and public life. Girls beyond sixth grade have been blocked from classrooms, women have been banned from universities, and female employees forced out of their workplaces.

Humanitarian organisations that once relied on Afghan women to reach vulnerable communities have been crippled because women staff are no longer permitted to work. Even small signs of independence are being erased. UNAMA reported that officials have shut down beauty salons run by women in their homes and women’s radio stations in different provinces.

In Kandahar, Taliban inspectors told shopkeepers in markets to refuse entry to women not accompanied by a guardian (mahram) and to report them. At one hospital, staff were ordered not to provide medical care to unaccompanied women.

The Taliban insist they are enforcing “Islamic law,” but this is their own extreme and violent interpretation. Across Islamic history, Sharia has been debated and applied differently, often with compassion. The Taliban’s version is not universal, nor is it inevitable. It is a political tool used to control women.

The outcome is harsh. Today, Afghan women are prisoners in their own country. They cannot travel freely, they cannot study freely, and in disasters like the earthquake, they cannot even be rescued if they are dying beneath rubble.

Growing Cases of Forced Conversions

Taliban leaders have tightened their grip even further, increasing restrictions on media outlets, reviving corporal punishment, and cracking down on religious freedom through forced re-education campaigns. Reports show that between 17th January and 3rd February, in Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan, at least 50 Ismaili men were taken from their homes at night and forced to convert to Sunni Islam under the threat of violence, the report says.

This was not the only example of cruelty. During the same reporting period, more than 180 people, including women and girls, have been flogged for the offences of adultery and practicing homosexuality during the reporting period, in public venues attended by Taliban officials. The purpose of these public punishments was not only to hurt individuals but also to spread fear among the entire community, reminding people that resistance or difference will not be tolerated.

Fear Returns with Public Punishments

The Taliban’s claimed version of Sharia has once again brought back punishments that the world had once condemned. Public floggings, amputations, and even executions have reappeared in towns and villages. These practices mirror the first Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001, when such punishments were used to keep people living in constant fear. Now, the same pattern is being repeated.

Women are silenced and kept out of sight. Men are instructed to impose these rules on their own families—on their wives, sisters, and even mothers. This system strips women of their status as individuals, reducing them to nothing more than the property of men.

Resistance comes at a heavy cost. When women try to raise their voices, protest, or demand even basic rights, they are met with harsh responses from the Taliban’s morality police. Arrests, intimidation, and violence have become common. Even Afghan women employed by the United Nations have faced growing harassment, forcing agencies to tell them to stay home for their own safety.

A Broken Economy Without Women’s Role

The earthquake was a tragedy of nature, but what happened to women buried under the rubble revealed something far more brutal. They died not because of collapsed walls but because men “could not touch them.” These deaths were not accidents of fate; they were human-made disasters caused by ideology placed above humanity.

Afghan women are not invisible, nor are they a burden. They are human beings worthy of the same dignity, the same rights, and the same opportunity to survive as men. Yet under the Taliban’s rule, this truth is ignored.

Until the Taliban see this, or until the world puts enough pressure on them to make them change, women in Afghanistan will keep dying, not just from earthquakes or starvation, but from the suffocating brutality of laws intended to wipe them out.

The wider reality is equally grim. Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Afghanistan’s security situation has collapsed, leaving the nation more isolated and poorer than ever. Nearly half of the population is starving, with families surviving on only one meal each day. The economy is crippled because women—half of the workforce—have been excluded from jobs and education. Humanitarian aid has also slowed, since female workers, once vital to reaching vulnerable communities, are no longer allowed to help.

This vicious cycle leaves Afghan women in a lose-lose position. They are banned from education and work, which means there are no women doctors, nurses, or caregivers in the country. And because there are no women in these roles, women trapped under rubble or in medical emergencies are left to die. In Afghanistan today, women are being denied not only their rights but their very chance to live, all under the Taliban’s harsh version of Islam.