Liberation Through Imperialism: How the U.S. Weaponizes Women’s Rights as a Pretext for Military Intervention

Afghan refugees living in Greece protest against the Taliban retaking control of their country, on August 19, 2021, in Athens, Greece. Photo by Dimitris Aspiotis.

On August 15, 2021, nearly twenty years after the 9/11 attacks and the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan that would follow, Taliban fighters seized control of the presidential palace in Kabul,  shocking the entire global community. Countless media outlets immediately responded by broadcasting images and videos depicting the utter chaos that ensued once the political upheaval began. Certain images were ubiquitous in the reporting of the coup and its immediate impacts: thousands of Afghans running alongside a plane as it taxis along the runway of Kabul International Airport, citizens protesting against the Taliban in cities across Afghanistan, and Taliban fighters seizing more and more provincial capitals every day. And just as in 2001, the terror and oppression Afghan women face under the Taliban regime have also become an essential component of the discourse surrounding whether the United States should take an interventionist stance on the Afghan coup. 

Mainstream feminists were essential in supporting the U.S.’ efforts to restore the rights of women in the countries it invaded in the early 2000s —Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular. The American women’s rights organization Feminist Majority, for instance, led a coalition of U.S. women’s groups that, along with the efforts of Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), “resulted in the allocation of $60 million for programs for Afghan women and girls and $5 million for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in 2003 as a part of an emergency supplemental appropriations package.” Suddenly awoken by the suffering of the Afghan women, American feminists enthusiastically supported efforts such as this, all the while choosing not to dwell on the fact that the Taliban rose to power with funding, training, and encouragement from the U.S. 

Women’s movements in Afghanistan show that Afghan women are not passive victims who need to be saved. In recent decades, women professionals have used their skills as leverage against repressive edicts. For example, the Taliban was forced to reinstate Suhaila Siddiqi, a female heart surgeon in 1996, so that she could operate on members of the group. Despite this instance of Afghan women taking leadership and fighting for their rights and others like it, women’s rights became a rallying cry for war. Only a few weeks after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, in a November 2001 radio adress, Laura Bush proclaimed that “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”. Less than a month later, at the signing ceremony for the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act of 2001, President George W. Bush remarked that “the central goal of the terrorists is the brutal oppression of women—and not only the women of Afghanistan.” This savior complex helped make the case for not only the war in Afghanistan but other U.S. wars that continue today. 

This rhetoric of saving Afghan women from the Taliban has not been relegated to the past. Even among lawmakers who generally support the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the rhetoric of saving Muslim women rendered impotent and terrorized persists today. On August 15, Speaker Nancy Pelosi commended President Joe Biden for speaking and acting on the Taliban takeover by tweeting, “We are concerned about reports regarding the Taliban’s brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls.” Here one sees the invocation of women’s rights as a barometer for “civilization”—a crucial part of the logic of empire. She implies that Afghanistan is a uniquely draconian place for women, reducing Afghan women to a monolithic group who are all repressed and in need of some form of humanitarianism. Almost invariably, such humanitarianism translates to military intervention. To the U.S. government, there will always be more brown women in need of salvation.

Women in Afghanistan have immensely suffered under U.S. occupation. Initially, there were significant gains from the United States’ mission to improve the plight of Afghan women: millions of girls attended school, and the country saw women become ministers, judges, and governors. Afghan women’s conditions have been worsened by the political, social, and economic instability that the decades-long war has produced. As Amie Ferris-Rotman writes, “The country still has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, almost 90% of Afghan women experience abuse in their lifetimes, and while a landmark 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law was passed, the Afghan government and its justice system largely ignored it.” These sobering facts demonstrate that the gains were tangible but also undoubtedly tenuous and precarious. 

On the surface, the United States’ rhetoric that frames fighting terrorism as fighting for women’s rights globally may appear as genuine concern about the sociopolitical impacts of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. However, recent history teaches us that this is simply not the case. The abuse of women in foreign countries—in the case of Afghanistan, women who had already been fighting for their rights—often becomes a pretext for American military intervention. The U.S. purports to be committed to saving Afghanistan’s powerless and terrorized Muslim women by delivering them the Western idea of empowerment and feminism. But with invasion, bombing, and occupation, the U.S. demonstrates otherwise.

Having caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and destroyed communities with bombs, airstrikes, and occupation, the U.S. harms not only the well-being of Afghan women but all people in the countries it occupies. The profound impact of the violence caused by U.S. imperialism on women proves that interventionism cannot be an effective feminist response because it materially worsens the conditions of women. When the United States so readily uses the oppression of women in countries such as Afghanistan as a pretext for military intervention, allyship with women directly impacted by U.S. imperialism is especially essential. The U.S. cannot purport to care about making conditions better for women by actively making them worse. One can see the importance of international solidarity and identification with women in Afghanistan and the global south today. When the United States so readily uses the oppression of women in countries such as Afghanistan as a pretext for military intervention, allyship with women directly impacted by U.S. imperialism is especially essential. Individuals and groups who wish to see material improvements in the lives of Afghan women must advocate for a new type of liberatory feminism—a feminism separate from practices anchored in imperialism that opposes the message of liberation through conquest.

Giselle Williams is a first-year student at Columbia College. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and her interests include grassroots organizing, state violence, racial capitalism, anti-colonial movements, the prison–industrial complex, and U.S. empire. Giselle tentatively plans to major in African American and African Diaspora Studies.