Afghanistan: Two years on from the Taliban seizing power, women fight back against poverty and restrictions

Published

2 years ago

August 15, 2023

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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.

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.

But some women whose businesses were destroyed have made the transition to smaller, underground enterprises to make ends meet.

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.

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.”

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.

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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.

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.”

World

Gaza food situation ‘worst it’s ever been’, charity says – as tank attack reportedly kills 12 at camp

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Gaza food situation 'worst it's ever been', charity says - as tank attack reportedly kills 12 at camp

An aid worker in Gaza has told Sky News the food situation in the enclave is “absolutely desperate” and “the worst it’s ever been”.

Her comments to chief presenter Mark Austin come amid fresh outcry over aid restrictions, with the UK joining 24 other countries to urge an immediate end to the war.

It also comes as at least 12 more Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded when tanks shelled a tent encampment in western Gaza City, according to health authorities.

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Medics, speaking early on Tuesday, said two shells were fired at tents housing displaced people from tanks positioned north of the Shati camp.

Israel hasn’t yet commented on the reports.

Rachael Cummings, humanitarian director for Save The Children, spoke to Sky News from Deir al Balah, a city where tens of thousands of people have sought refuge during repeated waves of mass displacement.

She said: “One of my colleagues said to me yesterday, ‘We are all walking together towards death’. And this is the situation now for people in Gaza.

“There is no food for their children, it’s absolutely desperate here.”

“The markets are empty,” she said. “People may even have cash in their pockets yet they cannot buy bread [or] vegetables.

“My team have said to me, ‘There’s nothing in my house to feed my children, my children are crying all day, every day.”

Israel launched a ground assault on southern and eastern Deir al Balah for the first time on Monday after having issued an evacuation order.

Local medics said at least three people were killed when houses and mosques were hit by tank shelling.

Sources told Reuters news agency that Israel believes some of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas in October 2023 could be in the area.

Ms Cummings’s remarks came as the UK and 24 other nations issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire.

The statement criticised aid distribution in Gaza, which is being managed by a US and Israel-backed organisation, Gaza Health Foundation (GHF).

Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed while trying to get food in recent weeks, both from GHF and UN convoys.

“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” the joint statement said.

The 25 countries also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of hostages captured by Hamas during the 7 October 2023 attacks.

Lammy promises £40m for Gaza

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has promised £40m for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

He told MPs: “We are leading diplomatic efforts to show that there must be a viable pathway to a Palestinian state involving the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, in the security and governance of the area.

“Hamas can have no role in the governance of Gaza, nor use it as a launchpad for terrorism.”

Addressing the foreign secretaries’ joint written statement, charity worker Liz Allcock – who works for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in Gaza – told Sky News: “While we welcome this, there have been statements in the past 21 months and nothing has changed.

“In fact, things have only got worse. And every time we think it can’t get worse, it does.”

“Without a reversal of the siege, the lack of supplies, the constant bombardment, the forced displacement, the killing, the militarisation of aid, we are going to collapse as a humanitarian response,” she said.

“And this would do a grave injustice to the 2.2 million people we’re trying to serve.

“An immediate and permanent ceasefire, and avenues for accountability in line with international law, is the minimum people here deserve.”

The war in Gaza started in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken hostage.

More than 59,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with more than half being women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

In recent weeks hundreds of Palestinians have reportedly been killed while waiting for food and aid.

The Israeli military has blamed Hamas militants for fomenting chaos and endangering civilians.

World

Trade war: Is August escalation on – or will Trump chicken out?

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Trade war: Is August escalation on - or will Trump chicken out?

Donald Trump is clearly seething over the term ‘TACO’ (Trump always chickens out) – a phrase that has characterised financial market trading over the past few months.

It suggests that for all the president’s bluster and threats during his on-off trade war to date, he rarely follows through.

When asked by a reporter about TACO in late May, as his “liberation day” escalation remained on pause, he declared it a “nasty” question and said he wanted negotiations.

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Mr Trump wants a deal but to effectively bully America’s trading partners into agreeing better terms.

It’s a playbook that has defined his time in the White House and, as things stand, more than 20 nations and territories, including Japan and South Korea, face heightened tariffs of up to 40% on their exports to the US from 1 August.

Financial markets don’t really believe it. Stock markets, for example, are still hovering near or at record levels in both the US and in Europe. The FTSE 100 closed above 9,000 points for the first time on Monday evening. TACO is ingrained in those values.

But are markets in for a shock, especially when it comes to the fight with America’s single largest trading partner, the European Union? It was created, Mr Trump has previously claimed, to “screw” the United States.

It’s fair to say there was great optimism in the EU earlier this month that a deal, similar to that agreed between the US and UK, was looming to avert the worst of a threatened 30% baseline tariff from 1 August.

But the mood music in Brussels changed at the back end of last week and now EU diplomats are even briefing that a broader range of retaliation measures is being considered beyond additional tariffs on US goods.

The seriousness of this fight should not be underestimated.

EU figures show trade in goods and services between the bloc and the US account for almost a third of all global trade, at a value in 2024 alone of €1.68trn (£1.45trn).

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic has warned that a 30% tariff would “practically prohibit” the bloc’s transatlantic trade, according to remarks via diplomats reported by the Reuters news agency.

We’re told that, even if time runs out, a truce could theoretically be agreed soon after 1 August.

Much will depend on the EU’s response.

Does it go down the route taken by the UK and not retaliate, pending the conclusion of talks?

There is growing pressure on Brussels to call Mr Trump’s bluff.

The EU has a package of tariffs on €21bn of US goods ready to go from 6 August. An additional package is yet to be finalised.

France is demanding US services are hit too, with even Germany now saying such an escalation should be considered.

The so-called “anti-coercion” instrument, as it’s known, would also potentially allow the bloc to limit US companies’ access to financial service markets in the EU.

So what happens after 1 August could be even more explosive.

But there is every reason to believe that a tit-for-tat escalation is unlikely, at least for long.

The very reason Donald Trump rowed back on his “liberation day” tariffs in April, allowing 90 days for talks, was likely the dire financial market reaction that followed news of the widespread duties.

You have a president demanding interest rate cuts (at a time when inflation is on the rise due to the impact of tariffs) in a bid to boost flagging economic growth.

Mr Trump says his trade war is all about boosting US manufacturing jobs but, at the end of the day, no powerbase of voters is going to accept a threat to the value of their investments for long.

No big US company will stand by and see its sales suffer.

TACO? It’s a solid bet.

World

Plane crashes into college campus in Bangladesh – at least 19 people dead

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Plane crashes into college campus in Bangladesh - at least 19 people dead

At least 19 people have died after a Bangladesh air force plane crashed into a college campus, the military said.

The aircraft crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College in Uttara, in the northern area of the capital Dhaka, where students were taking tests or attending regular classes.

The pilot was one of the people killed, and, according to the military, 164 were injured in the incident.

The Bangladesh military’s public relations department added that the aircraft was an F-7 BGI, and had taken off at 1.06pm local time before crashing shortly after.

Video shows fire and smoke rising from the crash site, with hundreds looking on.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Bengali-language daily newspaper Prothom Alo said that most of the injured were students with burn injuries.

Citing the duty officer at the fire service control room, Prothom Alo also reported that the plane had crashed on the roof of the college canteen.

Rafiqa Taha, a 16-year-old student at the school who was not present at the time of the crash, told the Associated Press that the school has around 2,000 students.

“I was terrified watching videos on TV,” she added. “My God! It’s my school.”