‘Their Complete Identity Has Been Taken From Them’

Right after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, Western media assigned the team a new moniker: “Taliban 2..” Certainly, the Islamic fundamentalist group that experienced dominated Afghanistan in the latter 50 % of the ’90s — overseeing a theocratic regime that repressed women of all ages, religious minorities and political opponents — promised to variety an “open, inclusive Islamic government” and that women were being “going to be very energetic in the modern society.”

Danish photographer Nanna Muus Steffensen, 36, has lived in Kabul due to the fact 2019. As the worldwide media little by little turned away, Muus saw swiftly how the Taliban began to renege on its guarantees and roll out a series of repressive steps, typically specific at Afghan gals. The caretaker cabinet installed in September was comprised of hardliners — and no females. That very same month, Afghanistan turned the only state where by ladies could not show up at superior faculty. And in May possibly, ladies have been purchased to deal with their faces in community and to only depart dwelling when needed. It was, states Muus, “a downward spiral above a 12 months.”

Muus’ photographic perform has explored the quite a few ways — some day-to-day and some everyday living-and-dying — these restrictions have altered life in Kabul. Fewer gals are observed on the streets, and the vibrant clothing they the moment wore has been swapped for darker garments. Fewer women are permitted to do the job, contributing to an economic crisis in which additional than 90 percent of Afghans are struggling from foods insecurity. The plunge of center-course people into poverty usually means lots of can no more time manage to go to personal hospitals, inundating general public maternity wards. And mental health problems are surfacing among a era of girls out of the blue stripped of their experienced and social selves. “Their complete identification has been taken away from them — their ideas, their intent, their long term, their goals,” Muus suggests.