rewrite this title Why young girls are disguised as boys in Afghanistan

In this four-minute clip, a disembodied voice asks a child in a dimly lit room: “Are you a man or a woman now?” The child looks terrified – and like she’s trying to be brave. She says she’s 13 years old. But she’s dressed like an Afghan boy: loose pants, a long shirt and a beaded cap.

The undated video was released to social media by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in early February. It’s one of many videos of interrogations they’ve circulated. The clips emphasize the group’s power: A Taliban agent is the voice behind the camera, demanding that their subject answer questions. But this video stood out: The agent was interrogating a girl, dressed as a boy.

The clip went viral for what it spotlights about life under the Taliban. Women are banned from working in most professions. Those who do not have male relatives able, or willing, to support them are driven into hunger and poverty.

The Taliban say that this video was shot four years ago — likely not long after they swept to power in August 2021. They did not respond to questions about why they chose to release the video this year. It is not clear what has happened to the young teenager since the video was released.

An ancient practice with new relevance

Girls dressed as boys has been documented for centuries in the patriarchal society of Afghanistan. It even has a term: a girl who disguises her gender is called a bacha posh — literally “dressing like a boy.”

Bacha posh girls have long captured the imaginations of Westerners in Afghanistan. It was addressed in the movie Osama in 2003 and the 2018 Oscar-nominated animation film The Breadwinner, produced by Angelina Jolie. It was the subject of a deep-dive book published in 2014, The Underground Girls of Kabul. 

The reason for girls to dress as boys in times long ago may have included a desire to go soldiering. But the practice has had a different relevance in modern-day Afghanistan, through the first period of Taliban rule in the mid-90s, and now — with the group’s restrictions on the freedom of women. Dressing as a boy offers a girl a chance to provide for her family, which may not have any men or boys, or at least, none available for work. Even those who do have men are struggling: the United Nations estimates that nearly 85% per cent of all Afghans are struggling to survive. 

“Under the Taliban’s vision of a society built on total female subordination, women are banned from most forms of employment and confined to homes and excluded from public life,” says Sahar Fetrat, researcher with the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

In that context, she says, “It is not hard to estimate that the practice of bacha poshi persists and rises,” Fetrat says, using the term that refers to the practice itself.

It’s impossible to know how many girls might be disguised as boys at any given time in Afghanistan, but one mental health worker from western Afghanistan tells NPR that it happens often enough. “I have come across such cases frequently in the last few years — my clients are dressing up their daughters as boys so they can work and support their families,” says the woman, who requested only her initials be used to identify her — NT — because she feared backlash from Taliban officials for discussing the topic.

She tells NPR that typically, it was mothers with “lots of daughters and no sons” who “turn one of their daughters into a son.”

There’s another benefit to having a girl-dressed-as-a-boy in this Taliban era: Authorities of the Taliban’s ministry for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue have, at random times through Afghanistan, imposed one of their rules, which prohibit women and girls from being in public without a male guardian — which can even be a boy. Enter the bacha posh.

“In some cases,” the mental health counselor says, it’s because a bacha posh “can move around more freely and run errands,” she says, “without coming under the Taliban scrutiny.”

The mental health counselor said one of her clients, a 16-year-old girl, who goes by the boy’s name Omid, often acts as a mahram, or male guardian, for her sisters and mother.

The counselor narrated part of her client’s story with their permission.

Omid has been dressing in boys’ clothes since she was 3. She is one of 7 sisters, and has one brother. When Omid’s father died, her mother forced her to wear boy’s clothes. “She felt they needed another male in the family.”

The mother turned her daughter into a publicly-presenting boy to help them earn money, to accompany them on errands as a mahram, but it was also for social status. “In Afghan culture,” the mental health counselor says, “sons are seen as valuable. So sometimes, families who don’t have sons will dress up one of their daughters and present them as a son to avoid social criticism.”

For some of the girls who become bacha posh, there’s a freedom that most would never otherwise experience, says the mental health counselor. They can run on the streets, play, go to the shops: they are unremarkable and expected to be seen in public space, the precise opposite of a girl’s experience in much of Afghanistan.

That was Omid’s experience, says the counselor. “He has the freedom to travel and work. He is friends with local boys, and he is now being asked to give that up,” she said.

And so when some bacha posh hit puberty — and can no longer disguise themselves as boys — it can be traumatic. Some “are unable to conform to the feminine traits and behaviors required by conservative society,” says the counselor. She says they experience psychological trauma — including Omid.

Trauma — and resentment, says a psychologist who has worked with women facing gender-based violence. She requested anonymity to speak freely about bacha posh because of the risks of retribution from the Taliban for discussing this taboo topic.

Bacha posh also experience the vulnerabilities of life as a boy in Afghanistan, which is replete with its own dangers, says Fetrat of Human Rights Watch. “The girls subjected to this practice face abuses, including sexual abuses outside the home, child labor, severe psychological, physical and identity-related harms.”

Fetrat says there are no good choices for women and girls in Afghanistan.

“The Taliban’s misogynist structure systematically treats women and girls as inferior,” she says. “Yet when women and girls are left with no choice but to attempt dressing as males, just to survive, they are met with punishment.”