Women in Afghanistan have set up secret businesses to escape the brutal restrictions of the Taliban, who swept to power two years ago today.
Since the August 2021 takeover, the group has become entrenched as rulers of Afghanistan and faces no significant opposition that could topple the regime.
The Taliban‘s seizing of power resulted in the end of two decades of increased economic opportunities and freedom for women in the country.
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0:58
‘No hope’ for Afghan women
Marzia Babakarkhail, a former family court judge in Afghanistan, told Sky News that women in the country are “in a battle”.
“We have no happiness outside or inside Afghanistan. We have no hope, we have no future for the young generation. There is just darkness and hopelessness,” she said.
The Taliban banned women from doing most jobs, barred girls and young women from secondary school and university education and imposed harsh curtailments on their freedoms.
All the while, the country faces a severe economic crisis, with 85% of the population living under the poverty line.
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But some women whose businesses were destroyed have made the transition to smaller, underground enterprises to make ends meet.
Image: Women in Kabul in November 2022
Laila Haidari’s restaurant was a lively hive of activity in Kabul that was known for its music and poetry evenings and was popular with intellectuals, writers, journalists and foreigners.
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She reinvested the profits from the restaurant into a drugs rehabilitation centre she set up nearby.
But just a few days after the Taliban seized power, the group destroyed Ms Haidari’s restaurant, looted the furniture, and threw out the patients attending the rehab centre.
Just five months later, she opened a secret craft centre where women can earn a small income stitching dresses and fashioning jewellery from melted-down bullet casings.
“I opened this centre to provide jobs for women who desperately need them,” Ms Haidari said.
“This is not a permanent solution, but at least it will help them put food on their table.”
Image: An Afghan woman walks among Taliban soldiers at a checkpoint in Kabul last month
The centre now helps fund an underground school providing 200 girls with lessons in maths and English. Some attend in person, others online.
“I don’t want Afghan girls to forget their knowledge and then, in a few years, we will have another illiterate generation,” Ms Haidairi said, referring to the women and girls deprived of education during the Taliban’s last period of rule from 1996 to 2001.
The centre, which also makes men’s clothing, rugs and home decor items, employs about 50 women who earn around £47 a month.
“If the Taliban try to stop me I’ll tell them they must pay me and pay these women,” she said.
“Otherwise, how will we eat?”
Dressmaker Wajiha Sekhawat, 25, created outfits for clients based on celebrities’ social media posts before August 2021.
But now her monthly income has fallen from about £470 to less than £150 partly due to demand for party dresses and business outfits plummeting after most women lost their jobs.
She would travel to Pakistan and Iran to buy fabrics for clients but now cannot travel without a male chaperone – a mahram – and often cannot afford the cost of doing so.
When she sent a male family member to Pakistan in her place he returned with the wrong fabrics.
“I used to make regular business trips abroad by myself, but now I can’t even go out for a coffee,” Ms Sekhawat said.
“It’s suffocating. Some days I just go to my room and scream.”
The restrictions are particularly difficult for the country’s estimated two million widows, as well as single women and divorcees who may not have anyone to act as their male chaperone.
After her husband’s death in 2015, Sadaf relied on the income from her busy Kabul beauty salon to support her five children.
Image: Kabul in November 2022
She offered hairstyling, make-up, manicures and wedding makeovers to a wide range of women from government workers to TV presenters.
Sadaf, 43, who asked to use a pseudonym, began running her business from home after the Taliban told her to shut her salon.
But with clients having lost their own jobs, most stopped coming or cut back and her monthly income dropped dramatically.
Last month the authorities ordered all salons to shut down, saying they offered treatments that went against their Islamic values.
More than 60,000 women are likely to lose their jobs as a result, according to industry estimates.
While the future looks grim for women’s freedoms in the country, aid agencies said they are emphasising the economic benefits of allowing women to work when negotiating with Taliban authorities.
“We tell them if we create jobs it means that these women can feed their family, it means they are paying taxes,” Melissa Cornet, an adviser to CARE Afghanistan, said.
“We try to have a pragmatic approach and usually it’s quite successful. The Taliban are very keen on the economic argument.”
Donald Trump has announced a 10% trade tariff on all imports from the UK – as he unleashed sweeping tariffs across the globe.
Speaking at a White House event entitled “Make America Wealthy Again”, the president held up a chart detailing the worst offenders – which also showed the new tariffs the US would be imposing.
“This is Liberation Day,” he told a cheering audience of supporters, while hitting out at foreign “cheaters”.
He claimed “trillions” of dollars from the “reciprocal” levies he was imposing on others’ trade barriers would provide relief for the US taxpayer and restore US jobs and factories.
Mr Trump said the US has been “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.
Image: Pic: AP
His first tariff announcement was a 25% duty on all car imports from midnight – 5am on Thursday, UK time.
Mr Trump confirmed the European Union would face a 20% reciprocal tariff on all other imports. China’s rate was set at 34%.
The UK’s rate of 10% was perhaps a shot across the bows over the country’s 20% VAT rate, though the president’s board suggested a 10% tariff imbalance between the two nations.
It was also confirmed that further US tariffs were planned on some individual sectors including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical mineral imports.
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6:39
Trump’s tariffs explained
The ramping up of duties promises to be painful for the global economy. Tariffs on steel and aluminium are already in effect.
The UK government signalled there would be no immediate retaliation.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We will always act in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers. That’s why, throughout the last few weeks, the government has been fully focused on negotiating an economic deal with the United States that strengthens our existing fair and balanced trading relationship.
“The US is our closest ally, so our approach is to remain calm and committed to doing this deal, which we hope will mitigate the impact of what has been announced today.
“We have a range of tools at our disposal and we will not hesitate to act. We will continue to engage with UK businesses including on their assessment of the impact of any further steps we take.
“Nobody wants a trade war and our intention remains to secure a deal. But nothing is off the table and the government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest.”
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0:43
Who showed up for Trump’s tariff address?
The EU has pledged to retaliate, which is a problem for Northern Ireland.
Should that scenario play out, the region faces the prospect of rising prices because all its imports are tied to EU rules under post-Brexit trading arrangements.
It means US goods shipped to Northern Ireland would be subject to the EU’s reprisals.
The impact of a trade war would be expected to be widely negative, with tit-for-tat tariffs risking job losses, a ramping up of prices and cooling of global trade.
Research for the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested more than 25,000 direct jobs in the UK car manufacturing industry alone could be at risk from the tariffs on car exports to the US.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) had said the tariff costs could not be absorbed by manufacturers and may lead to a review of output.
The tariffs now on UK exports pose a big risk to growth and the so-called headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced to restore to the public finances at the spring statement, risking further spending cuts or tax rises ahead to meet her fiscal rules.
A member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, told MPs on Tuesday that US tariffs at 20% or 25% maintained on the UK for five years would “knock out all the headroom the government currently has”.
But he added that a “very limited tariff war” that the UK stays out of could be “mildly positive”.
He said: “There’s a bit of trade that will get diverted to the UK, and some of the exports from China, for example, that would have gone to the US, they’ll be looking for a home for them in the rest of the world.
“And stuff would be available in the UK a bit cheaper than otherwise would have been. So there is one, not central scenario at all, which is very, very mildly potentially positive to the UK. All the other ones which involve the UK facing tariffs are negative, and they’re negative to very different extents.”
Israel is beginning a major expansion of its military operation in Gaza and will seize large areas of the territory, the country’s defence minister said.
Israel Katz said in a statement that there would be a large scale evacuation of the Palestinian population from fighting areas.
In a post on X, he wrote: “I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to remove Hamas and return all the hostages. This is the only way to end the war.”
He said the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel”.
The expansion of Israel’s military operation in Gaza deepens its renewed offensive.
The deal had seen the release of dozens of hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but collapsed before it could move to phase two, which would have involved the release of all hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
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1:08
26 March: Anti-Hamas chants heard at protest in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had already issued evacuation warnings to Gazans living around the southern city of Rafah and towards the city of Khan Yunis, telling them to move to the al Mawasi area on the shore, which was previously designated a humanitarian zone.
Israeli forces have already set up a significant buffer zone within Gaza, having expanded an area around the edge of the territory that had existed before the war, as well as a large security area in the so-called Netzarim corridor through the middle of Gaza.
This latest conflict began when Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages.
The ensuing Israeli offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
Aid group Doctors Without Borders warned on Wednesday that Israel’s month-long siege of Gaza means some critical medications are now short in supply and are running out, leaving Palestinians at risk of losing vital healthcare.
“The Israeli authorities’ have condemned the people of Gaza to unbearable suffering with their deadly siege,” said Myriam Laaroussi, the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza.
“This deliberate infliction of harm on people is like a slow death; it must end immediately.”
“Liberation day” was due to be on 1 April. But Donald Trump decided to shift it by a day because he didn’t want anyone to think it was an April fool.
It is no joke for him and it is no joke for governments globally as they brace for his tariff announcements.
It is stunning how little we know about the plans to be announced in the Rose Garden of the White House later today.
It was telling that we didn’t see the President at all on Tuesday. He and all his advisers were huddled in the West Wing, away from the cameras, finalising the tariff plans.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the so-called ‘measured voice’. A former hedge fund manager, he has argued for targeted not blanket tariffs.
Peter Navarro is Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing. A long-time aide and confidante of the president, he is a true loyalist and a firm believer in the merits of tariffs.
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His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought – precisely why he appeals to Trump.
The third key character is Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and the biggest proponent of the full-throttle liberation day tariff juggernaut.
The businessman, philanthropist, Trump fundraiser and billionaire (net worth ranging between $1bn and $2bn) has been among the closest to Trump over the past 73 days of this presidency – frequently in and out of the West Wing.
If anything goes wrong, observers here in Washington suspect Trump will make Lutnick the fall guy.
And what if it does all go wrong? What if Trump is actually the April fool?
“It’s going to work…” his press secretary said when asked if it could all be a disaster, driving up the cost of living for Americans and creating global economic chaos.
“The president has a brilliant team who have been studying these issues for decades and we are focussed on restoring the global age of America…” Karoline Leavitt said.
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2:52
‘Days of US being ripped off are over’
Dancing to the president’s tune
My sense is that we should see “liberation day” not as the moment it’s all over in terms of negotiations for countries globally as they try to carve out deals with the White House. Rather it should be seen as the start.
Trump, as always, wants to be seen as the one calling the shots, taking control, seizing the limelight. He wants the world to dance to his tune. Today is his moment.
But beyond today, alongside the inevitable tit-for-tat retaliation, expect to see efforts by nations to seek carve-outs and to throw bones to Trump; to identify areas where trade policies can be tweaked to placate the president.
Even small offerings which change little in a material sense could give Trump the chance to spin and present himself as the winning deal maker he craves to be.
One significant challenge for foreign governments and their diplomats in Washington has been engaging the president himself with proposals he might like.
Negotiations take place with a White House team who are themselves unsure where the president will ultimately land. It’s resulted in unsatisfactory speculative negotiations.
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6:03
Treasury minister: ‘We’ll do everything to secure a deal’
Too much faith placed in the ‘special relationship’?
The UK believes it’s in a better position than most other countries globally. It sits outside the EU giving it autonomy in its trade policy, its deficit with the US is small, and Trump loves Britain.
It’s true too that the UK government has managed to accelerate trade conversations with the White House on a tariff-free trade partnership. Trump’s threats have forced conversations that would normally sit in the long grass for months.
Yet, for now, the conversations have yielded nothing firm. That’s a worry for sure. Did Keir Starmer have too much faith in the ‘special relationship’?
Downing Street will have identified areas where they can tweak trade policy to placate Trump. Cars maybe? Currently US cars into the UK carry a 10% tariff. Digital services perhaps?
US food? Unlikely – there are non-tariff barriers on US food because the consensus seems to be that chlorinated chicken and the like isn’t something UK consumers want.
Easier access to UK financial services maybe? More visas for Americans?
For now though, everyone is waiting to see what Trump does before they either retaliate or relent and lower their own market barriers.