India has long provided refuge to people escaping war and persecution. After the Taliban’s  return to power in August 2021, many Afghans—including former government officials,  women, minorities, journalists, and human rights activists—fled abroad and to India (Kaul,  2022). However, India lacks a formal refugee law, forcing most Afghan refugees to rely on the  UNHCR for aid and support. Afghan men face unemployment, financial insecurity, and the  constant fear of deportation, especially those with military or government backgrounds. For  Afghan women, the challenges are even more layered. Along with the trauma of displacement  and uncertain legal status, they also face gender-based discrimination. Many have limited  access to healthcare, education, and safe work opportunities. (Gender Perspectives on Afghan  Refugee Integration, n.d.; Kaul, 2022). Some are survivors of violence, with little institutional  support available in India. This paper explores how Afghan women uniquely experience  displacement and argues for the formulation of refugee protection law and gender-sensitive  policy.

The return of the Taliban has significantly affected Central and South Asia; it has exacerbated  tension related to perceived security threats, including border security, the issue of refugees,  and humanitarian crises. For instance, the Taliban’s return raises severe security concerns for  Pakistan as organizations like Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISI-K) have increased their operation.

Similarly, there has been an issue of outflow of refugees from Afghanistan resulting from  factors like economic collapse, severe restrictions by the Taliban, poverty, and natural  disasters. Besides, there has been an issue of drug trafficking, cross-border skirmishes, and  increased militancy.

Citizenship has long been theorised primarily as a formal legal designation, as a status conferred by the state upon those it recognises as belonging. However, to reduce citizenship to legal status only is to ignore the lived, embodied, and deeply political processes through which people come to be recognised or denied recognition. What has become increasingly more visible is that citizenship is not merely held; it is performed. And nowhere is this more apparent than under totalitarian rule, where the performance of citizenship is not a right but a coercion which is choreographed by the regime and enforced through terror. The Taliban rule has heavily narrowed down visibility for many gender and sexual minorities, by enforcing strict binaries and norms, making any possible deviation punishable by law. In such a repressive environment, non-citizenship is manufactured through compelled silence and systematic erasure. Citizenship, at large, becomes a gendered performance, and deflection risks potentially fatal consequences.

As  Afghanistan emerges as a strategic focal point in the regional ambit, various global players are thronging to secure an eminent position on the establishment of stability and peace in the country since the Taliban takeover and subsequent complete withdrawal by the Western forces had created a political and security vacuum. After two decades of military involvement and trillions of dollars invested, coupled with the Taliban’s failure to honour its promises and repeated violations of the Doha agreement, it remains very unlikely that any western governments including the European union will be willing to politically invest in Afghanistan that will go beyond just humanitarian assistance. This leaves the door open to other players to broker security deals with the Taliban. One of those could be China, as a stable and secured Afghanistan could be the next valuable addition to its Belt and Road initiative which would increase its dominance in Central Asia. For the Taliban, China could bring financial assistance and political legitimisation.

This research paper will explore how the foreign policy of countries, including the United  States, NATO members, regional powers like Pakistan, Iran, China, and others, has impacted the lives of women in Afghanistan since 2001. The analysis would be done  from both Western and indigenous Afghan feminist lenses.

Afghanistan has become the focal point for competing foreign policy agendas since US US-led invasion in 2001, many of which claim to protect Afghan women. Early on, Women’s rights were explicitly invoked as a justification for military intervention by  Western countries. Former First Lady Laura Bush, in 2001 in her speech framed the war  on terror as a “fight for women’s rights and dignity.” This narrative was later criticized for  using Afghan women as a symbol in a “white savior” war narrative. Scholars term this  “embedded feminism,” noting that liberating Afghan women’s narrative helped  legitimize war.