After 48 days of absence, Abdul Hakim Sharia, the Taliban’s Minister of Justice, who is on the European Union’s sanctions list, attended the International Conference on Building Bridges Between Islamic Denominations in the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The conference, which was held for two days with the participation of scholars and clerics from Islamic countries, was held on Friday. Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for the Taliban, announced the participation of Abdul Hakim Shariai in the conference.

Recently, it was reported that Abdul Hakim Sharia is in a trip to Dubai and there is possibility of his resignation from the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice.

Recently, the audio recording of Abdul Hakim Shariai leaked where he was talking about his resigning from his position as Minister of Justice in protest against widespread corruption and tribalism among Taliban officials. In the audio recording, he emphasizes that he has resigned from his position many times due to widespread corruption among the group’s officials, but his resignation has not been accepted.

Did Sharia resigned before going to Dubai and now he appeared in Saudi Arabia  

However, the Ministry of Justice rejected his resignation said that Abdul Hakim Sharai’s resignation, said that he had gone to Dubai but had not resigned from his position. The ministry said that Mr. Sharai went to Dubai for treatment under the guidance of Haibatullah Akhundzada and will soon return to the country and take care of his official duties.

The last news from the Taliban Ministry of Justice about Abdul Hakim Sharia was published on January 19, and since then, no news or occasional messages have been published from his address.

The Taliban have not provided details about Abdul Hakim Sharia’s illness, and it is still unclear when he went to Saudi Arabia.

Abdul Hakim Sharia is on the global sanctions list. The European Union sanctioned this Taliban official in January 2013 for his role in depriving women of work and education. Along with him, the Taliban’s education minister and the group’s chief justice were also sanctioned for gender-based violence.

The European Union said that Abdul Hakim Shariai had systematically tried to manipulate the judicial system against women. The union cited the Taliban official’s misogynistic actions, including revoking women’s attorney licenses, depriving women of legal and judicial representation, and preventing the implementation of the law prohibiting violence against women.

The European Union has accused Sharia of eliminating women’s legal protections and placing them in a legal vacuum, which has led to widespread human rights violations and an obstacle to justice and equality.

The uprising that erupted last night in the coastal regions of Syria, predominantly inhabited by Alawites, against the transitional government established under the leadership of HTS, continued until the morning. After the clashes, which resulted in the deaths of more than 70 people and injuries to dozens more, the HTS administration declared a curfew in Latakia, Tartus, and Homs during the night.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the tension began in the village of Bayt Ana, in the Jableh district of Latakia, after villagers prevented HTS-affiliated security forces from arresting a person wanted on charges of arms smuggling. Security forces clashed with armed individuals in the village who had served as colonels in the Syrian army during the Assad era and were loyal to Suheil al-Hassan. The use of air support by HTS forces during the clashes led to their spread.

Mustafa Kuneyfati, the Director of the Latakia General Security Administration of the HTS administration, speaking to the Syrian official news agency SANA, stated, “Elements of the overthrown regime launched a planned attack on the checkpoints of the general security forces. Public institutions were destroyed.”

One of the locations that witnessed the fiercest clashes last night was Tartus, which hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean. It was reported that clashes continued around Tartus until morning.

The HTS-affiliated army dispatched reinforcement units consisting of hundreds of vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and multiple rocket launchers, to the provinces of Latakia and Tartus.

According to a report by SANA, citing security sources, operations to capture the “forces of the overthrown regime” will be expanded and continued. Those who wish to surrender their weapons were called upon to go to the nearest security checkpoint.

Since the morning, images of unarmed people massacred in some areas, including the village of Haffah in rural Latakia, have been widely shared on social media.

During the operations carried out in Jableh, it was reported that Ibrahim Huwayjah, the former head of Syrian Air Force Intelligence, was detained.

Huwayjah, who served between 1987 and 2002, is alleged to have been responsible for hundreds of assassinations during the era of former President Hafez al-Assad and to have played a role in the assassination of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt 48 years ago.

While the clashes were ongoing, a statement attributed to Brigadier General Ghiyas Suleiman Dalla, a high-ranking military official from the Assad era, circulated on social media.

The statement announced the establishment of the “Military Council for the Liberation of Syria,” stating that the council’s purpose is “to liberate all Syrian territories from the occupying terrorist forces” and “to overthrow the current regime and dismantle the oppressive sectarian security apparatus.” Syrians from various sects, regions, and ethnicities were called upon to join the council’s ranks.

On the other hand, Sheikh Ghazal, the President of the Supreme Islamic Alawite Council, representing Alawite communities in Syria and the diaspora, condemned the “bombing of civilian settlements by warplanes” in a statement on social media and called for peaceful demonstrations in Latakia, Tartous, Damascus, and Homs this afternoon.

According to a report by AFP, following the news that HTS forces were targeted in the clashes in Latakia, a crowd of young men gathered in Idlib, the stronghold of HTS, to support the military command. Calls for ‘jihad’ against “militants” on the Syrian coast were made from mosque loudspeakers.

The struggle of women in Afghanistan has two different faces; one in conference halls, international media, reports by human rights organizations, and development projects, and the other in the silent back alleys of villages, behind mud walls, among dried-up fields, and houses that are not shelters for women but prisons of tradition and oppression.

On one side are women who speak at international meetings, participate in political meetings, and sign legal reports, and on the other side are women whose names are never mentioned in any report, women who do not chant slogans, but fight every day in the most difficult conditions for their most basic human rights.

One of the biggest gaps in the struggle of Afghan women is the gap between project women and rural women. Project women are often educated, familiar with foreign languages, and affiliated with international organizations. They defend women’s rights at conferences, speak about the situation of women in the media, and explain the Afghan crisis to representatives of Western governments.

But the rural woman, even if she has heard of these meetings, does not see them as part of her life. For her, the struggle means trying to escape hunger, violence, humiliation, and restrictions that have deprived her of even the opportunity to think about human rights.

They are analysis of the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt explains how oppressive systems, without the need for direct violence, can create conditions in which oppression appears normal and unobjectionable by creating bureaucratic structures and marginalizing certain groups.

Rural Afghan women are caught in precisely such a structure; they are not only victims of Taliban repression, but their neglect and deprivation are so institutionalized in the traditional system that their condition seems to be a natural part of the social order. This is what Arendt calls everyday evil; oppression that operates without being recognized as “oppression.”

On the other hand, Susan Sontag, in her book “On the Suffering of Others,” points out how human tragedies become insignificant when they are kept out of the eyes of the media and policymakers. The Afghan rural woman is in exactly this position; while the world focuses on female political activists, journalists, and intellectuals, the rural woman, who bears the heaviest burden of violence, remains hidden from view.

On the other hand, women’s rights movements in Afghanistan have been led mainly by urban, educated women affiliated with international institutions. Although these women fight for the rights of Afghan women, they represent a specific segment of society whose lives are completely different from those of indigenous Afghan women, rather than being the true voices of rural women.

These two struggles, although seemingly waged for a common goal, in practice, take two completely different paths.

The project woman knows the language of politics, has international networks, and uses power mechanisms to advance her goals. But the rural woman has no knowledge of these concepts, no one to defend her rights, and no opportunity to even participate in local meetings. She has never been included in official statements or international campaigns, but she fights every day on an unequal battlefield to preserve her most basic rights.

The problem begins when many project women, without knowing the reality of the lives of indigenous women, prescribe for them. They speak in the language of Western concepts and with enlightened views on gender equality, but the rural woman only knows the language of survival. For the project woman, reforming the laws is important, but for the rural woman, finding a way to save her daughter from forced marriage is important. These two struggles, although seemingly waged for a common goal, in practice, take two completely different paths.

It should not go unmentioned that the suffering of rural women in Afghanistan knows no boundaries of ethnicity, lineage, or province. The Hazara woman of Daikundi, the Pashtun woman of Uruzgan, the Tajik woman of Badakhshan, and the Uzbek woman of Faryab are all caught in a cycle of oppression that has been passed down from generation to generation. Their pain is not born of ethnic differences, but is the product of a tribal and patriarchal system that has relegated women to a subordinate position.

Although local structures, regional traditions, and cultural differences can exert various forms of pressure and control on women, the essence of the story does not change; rural women, wherever they are in this land, have neither ownership of land, nor access to income, nor the freedom to decide their own destiny.

She, like other women in different regions, has experienced only one thing: being forgotten. Policymakers, international institutions, and even women’s rights movements have often failed to acknowledge the fact that the pain of rural women is not a local or ethnic issue, but a national reality that requires collective understanding and action.

The historical and social roots of rural women’s deprivation

Afghanistan has long been dominated by tribal systems in which women are considered the “property” of men. This view has not only deprived women of property rights, decision-making and economic independence, but also placed them in a position where even their bodies and lives are at the disposal of the men in the family. In these societies, forced marriages, the exchange of women in tribal conflicts and the imposition of silence on women are part of a system that has persisted for generations. Many women remain dependent on the decisions of their brothers, fathers, and sons, even after marriage.

In his theory of “Gift and Exchange in Traditional Societies,” French sociologist Marcel Mauss explains how in some societies, women are not seen as individuals but as part of a system of power exchange between men. This is particularly evident in Afghanistan, especially in the villages, where women are often seen as part of family or tribal bargaining chips, and their personal autonomy is meaningless.

One of the main reasons for this situation to persist is the lack of an effective and inclusive central government that can extend laws protecting women to the countryside. Afghan governments have always been embroiled in civil wars, widespread corruption, and weak governance, and have failed to create a unified system to protect women’s rights. Even during periods when relatively more progressive governments ruled in Kabul, reforms never reached rural and remote areas.

In his discussion of “cultural hegemony,” Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci explains how states propagate particular ideologies in society to consolidate their power. In Afghanistan, various states have failed to establish hegemony over women’s rights in the villages because each time social reforms have been initiated, tribal structures have resisted them.

The lack of a strong and supportive national state has meant that women’s rights have never become a public issue and have remained within the purview of urban elites. Many political thinkers, including Antonio Gramsci, have argued that the absence of a “sustainable cultural hegemony” prevents social reform from reaching the depths of society.

In Afghanistan, governments have not only failed to create sustainable laws, but any changes have remained limited to urban administrative structures and have never reached the reality of rural women’s lives.

What to do?

With the Taliban closing the borders, women’s rights activists are no longer able to enter Afghanistan. But that doesn’t mean the fight is over. There are many alternative ways to reach rural women with awareness and support: A large proportion of rural women have access to mobile phones. This tool should be used to raise awareness about legal rights, ways to combat violence, and economic methods. Producing content in different formats – in local languages ​​– can help rural women.

The second is the development of clandestine schools and informal education systems. During the early days of Taliban regime, underground schools were able to educate a new generation of girls. This model needs to be revived today. Online education, although limited, is one way to transfer knowledge to rural girls.

Another possible solution is to support small businesses run by rural women, such as carpet weaving and handicrafts, and connect them to foreign markets. Franz Fanon, in his book “The Wretched of the Earth” points out that economic independence and consciousness are two key factors in the liberation of the colonized.

Rural Afghan women will also never be able to free themselves from traditional patriarchal structures without economic independence. Therefore, developing local businesses and connecting them to the labor market can be one of the real ways to empower women.

For example, creating support and educational networks between elite women and indigenous women, and documenting rural women’s narratives can lead to the transfer of experience and knowledge from one group to another; and dozens of other things.

Yes! The Taliban have closed the borders, but they cannot cage consciousness. If rural women realize that they have the right to life, choice, education, and property, the historical chains of subordination will be broken one by one.