2. The Treatment of Taliban Women By Grace Burgess-Poole

3. No Rights At All: Discrimination Against Afghanistan Women In Afganistan, the year 1996, the Tailbanian took over and began their enforcement of laws, mostly against women. Some laws include: Girls over 12 must wear a burqa Girls over 12 are forbidden to leave the home without a male relative and cannot go to WORK or SCHOOL No video cassettes, music, cameras No white socks In every house where a women lives the windows must be painted black

4. In public, women must be covered from head to toe by a burqa, an oppressive garment that has only a tiny mesh opening over the eyes.

5. Through the burqa the woman is unable to breath or see properly. She is unable to feel the sunshine or receive beneficial vitamin C from the sun.

6. The Taliban took control of Kabul on Sept. 26, 1996, and began a reign of terror. Because of the civil unrest many Afghan women are widows -- there are 30,000 in Kabul alone - without close male relatives, and they are the sole supporters of their children.

7. Yet, by Taliban law they are unable to work to support the children, or leave the house without a male family member to buy food. If there isn’t a male family member, they face the possibility of a beating every time they leave their home. There are a few supplemental houses which provide free food to widows and orphans, but many are forced to beg in the streets for money.

8. Thousands of Afghan war-widows have no other option but to beg to save their children from hunger. Any Taliban man can flog these ill-fated women in the streets because most of them have to leave their houses without a close male relative.

9. 15,000 women in the Kabul region of Afghanistan are widows, but the law of the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist groups that rule the region, forbids them from leaving their homes without a male family member as an escort. (John Moore/AP Photo)

10. Talibs, like these boys, are authorized to use weapons and whips on women if they decide any are breaking the Taliban's repressive laws.

11. Taliban “religious police” beating a woman in public.

12. Afghan women begging to survive.

13. Laws under the Taliban It's now illegal to wear makeup, nail polish, jewelry, pluck your eyebrows, cut your hair short, wear colorful or stylish clothes, sheer stockings, white socks and shoes, high heel shoes, walk loudly, talk loudly, laugh in public or to participate in sports.

14. Before the Taliban took over, women had the right to education, were represented in government and worked in offices. Forty percent of the country's doctors were women.

15. Women have died of treatable ailments because male doctors were not allowed to treat them. Many women, now forcibly housebound, have attempted suicide by swallowing household cleaner, rather than continuing to live under these conditions. 97% of Afghan women surveyed by Physicians for Human Rights exhibit signs of major depression. The Results of a Taliban Rule

16. At a huge risk of women students continue their education in an underground school.

17. A woman who dared to defy Taliban orders by running a home school for girls was shot and killed in front of her husband, daughter, and students. A woman caught trying to flee Afghanistan with a man not related to her was stoned to death for adultery. An elderly woman was brutally beaten with a metal cable until her leg was broken because her ankle was accidentally showing from underneath her burqa. The Consequences Breaking a Taliban Rule

18. Prohibited women and girls from being examined by male physicians while at the same time, prohibited most female doctors and nurses from working. (Currently there are a few, selected female doctors allowed to operate in segregated wards.) Laws under the Taliban

19. The women of Afghanistan are desolate and until the Taliban is abolished, they have little hope.