Now that the arrest warrants have been announced, countries engaged with Afghanistan will likely face increased pressure to hold the Taliban accountable, argues Sara Wahedi [photo credit: Getty Images]
On January 23, ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he had requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, for being “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women.”
Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, this development is arguably the most direct statement of international accountability yet — an assertion that the Taliban’s draconian list of decrees, some of the most oppressive in the past year, are not simply policies of governance but matters of criminality.
The Taliban, perhaps believing it could rely on its own axis of support, may soon face increasing isolation under international law if successful ICC proceedings make it increasingly difficult for countries to trade and engage with the de facto regime. The case itself could push internal factions within the Taliban to question whether their leadership is charting a sustainable path — or instead steering the country toward deeper isolation and potential civil conflict.
Why the ICC?
At present, Afghan women have no viable avenues within the country to seek justice for gender persecution. In a December 2023 report, UN Women highlighted that the legal process for addressing grievances in Afghanistan is tightly bound by rigid interpretations of Sharia law.
This inflexible system relies heavily on informal mediation mechanisms that not only compromise women’s safety but also force them into precarious settlements with abusive parties, effectively denying them meaningful access to justice. The report noted that mechanisms and policies enabling victims to obtain legal redress and protection have “all but disappeared” since the Taliban takeover.
Over the past two years, Afghan women — both inside and outside the country — alongside international NGOs, have been advocating for the recognition of gender apartheid under international law. They argue that persecution alone fails to capture the full scope of the Taliban’s systematic erasure of Afghan women and girls, nor does it account for the deliberate codification of their oppression.
Currently, Chief Prosecutor Khan has proceeded with charges of gender persecution against Afghan women and girls, submitting an application for arrest warrants to the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber for review. If they determine that there are reasonable grounds to believe the alleged crimes were committed, they will issue the arrest warrants.
As this marks the first time the ICC is focusing solely on the crime of gender persecution, confirmation of these charges would represent an unprecedented win for Afghan women and for cases of gender persecution globally, where regimes perpetrate crimes on the basis of gender.
For many Afghan women — especially those who remain in the country — the news of the ICC arrest warrants has emboldened them to continue living their lives as a form of resistance against the regime.
Bahar, a computer science graduate currently working underground, stated that manoeuvring through the Taliban’s extensive list of decrees is now an even more defiant form of protest: “Now, when the Taliban stops our cars to ask where we are going, or to keep our voices down, we know that our refusal to sit at home and continue living our lives to the best of our abilities isn’t for nothing. The world is starting to listen. We have to keep fighting in our own way for now.” Her words echo across a nation where every act of defiance is a protest against systematic repression, a reminder that even in the darkest times, the will to resist burns bright.
Restrictions on education, employment, and NGOs
Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban have banned girls from receiving an education beyond sixth grade and barred women from jobs and most public spaces.
Their most recent decree — the ban on women in NGOs — enforces a two-year-old regulation that prohibits women from working with both national and international non-governmental organisations.
Even before the Taliban’s return, Afghan women played a significant role in NGOs across the country, especially in areas where a larger segment of the population lives in poverty.
The ban on women in NGOs is particularly perverse, as women and children in rural areas depend on female doctors, practitioners, and NGO workers for urgent care. By barring these professionals, a significant subset of the population is denied access to essential services, thereby exacerbating many of the issues that the Taliban claim are being worsened by global isolation.
These self-imposed decisions, which directly impact the Afghan people, must be highlighted to illustrate the glaringly hypocritical stance of the Taliban — a regime that claims to champion Islamic values while systematically undermining the rights of half its population.
What happens next?
Now that the arrest warrants have been announced, countries engaged with Afghanistan — whether through diplomatic channels, trade, or economic relations — will likely face increased pressure to hold the Taliban accountable.
These arrest warrants should serve as a tool for strategic diplomacy, providing a route for protecting the hard-fought gains of Afghan women and girls on the world stage. They offer countries the opportunity to pressure the Taliban by establishing benchmarks tied to the provision of aid and essential services.
Moreover, the imposition of any further discriminatory decrees could be construed as a violation of international law. In this context, the arrest warrants may set a legal precedent, signalling that the Taliban, and any regime that enforces systematic gender persecution, cannot act with impunity under international law.
This is the first case of its kind, and in light of the recent atrocities in the DRC, where more than 100 female prisoners were brutally raped and burned alive following a mass jailbreak on February 5, it is indefensible that international law has taken this long to formally recognise gender persecution as a crime of the highest order.
For centuries, women’s bodies have been weaponised in warfare, yet the legal system has failed to hold perpetrators accountable at the highest levels. If the case of Afghan women and girls succeeds, it may set a long-overdue precedent — one that not only delivers retribution but cements gender-based persecution as a prosecutable crime, forcing regimes worldwide to reckon with their actions.
Internal Taliban Dynamics
The impact of the ICC arrest warrants may also be reverberating within internal Taliban affairs, as a split appears to be emerging within the group.
Earlier this month, Sher Abbas Stanikzai — a senior Taliban leader who was at the forefront of the Doha Agreement, the blueprint that enabled the Taliban to swiftly return to power — vocalised a rare public dissent urging Akhundzada to lift the ban. He stated:
“We are committing an injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million, depriving them of all their rights. This is not in Islamic law, but our personal choice or nature.”
What is particularly different about this regime compared to the previous one is that many Taliban members, some of whom have their own daughters, are beginning to recognise the glaring hypocrisy of allowing their daughters to pursue higher education while Afghan women and girls — and by extension, the country they govern — are barred from similar opportunities.
A shift is underway across Afghanistan, toward an Afghanistan that the Taliban once touted as being free of warfare — a peace achieved through bloodshed that once emboldened their return to power. Now, Afghans living in an arguably “peaceful” Afghanistan will demand more, as many post-conflict examples show us. They will seek economic stability, career prospects, governmental support, and overall sustainability.
The question of the future for 50% of the population — the ongoing, spiralling gender persecution of Afghan women and girls — has largely been sidelined by the Taliban.
Yet in time, Afghan men, pushed by the women in their families, may begin to question their country’s power holders, asking why they are shunned from education while their own daughters study in Pakistan and the Gulf countries.
The ICC arrest warrants, coupled with these emerging internal disagreements now seeping into public view, maybe a sign that the Taliban’s leadership is poised for a shift — a shift that must come to terms with an Afghanistan spearheaded by many women who refuse to remain in the shadows, their determination etched in the ink of defiance.
As international pressure converges with emerging internal rifts within the Taliban, Afghanistan may soon witness a reckoning: one in which the voices of its women and girls — which the Taliban so desperately wants to silence — will redraw the nation’s destiny.
The world is watching, and its highest court is coming for the men at the top: those who built and are emboldened by this system of oppression. And if history tells us anything, it may only be a matter of time before it collapses, not from the outside, but from within.
Sara Wahedi is an Afghan-Canadian tech entrepreneur and humanitarian. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Civaam, a civic-technology firm centring technologists in crisis regions.
Follow her on X: @SaraWahedi
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
