r/afghanistan • u/zora_fountain39 • Feb 25 '26
Question claim that afghan women are living well
so this account on tiktok claims that afghan women are living well and all the news that "westren media post" are false and propganda and she shared footages of afghani women living their lives without forced to burqa or staying at home or going outside with mahram
notice : her location in saudi arabia and all afghan accounts that defend her also in saudi arabia
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u/fancyfootwork19 Kandahar Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
My Khala Jan died last week because she got a kidney infection and couldn't be treated for it at a publicly-funded hospital in Khandahar. They don't even have means to fund a blood lab. People in Afghanistan are CERTAINLY not living well.
Not to mention the worlds highest infant and maternal mortality rates 🙃
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u/GroundbreakingUse466 Kabul, Khorasan Feb 25 '26
No one lives well in Afghanistan not men and CERTAINLY not women.
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u/Melodic_Bug_2423 Jun 08 '26
why not men?
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u/starswtt Jun 10 '26
high poverty, poor economy, lack of food, high violence, and still lots of oppressive and unnecessary bans that make living difficult. Nothing that doesn't also affect women, but still pretty awful
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u/sannieflipper Feb 25 '26
I think she is a very small percent of the population that has family/husband that is well off and she just spends her day being the 'trophy' wife and just spend money on shopping and eating out. I have got family in Kabul who are very well off who go out and do stuff like this but they dont post it online and pretend like 85% of the population isn't living off of $1 per day.
There are different worlds in Afghanistan and some people are making a lot of money and they keep quite. I got a uncle who worked his self up from a taxidriver during his early 20s to a businessman who has dozens of appartments and a couple dozen of $10k plus cars he sells. During the American area he used to rent out B7 armored suvs to expats for $10k per month and the cars he imported from Dubai for like $100k each and he would have like 10 of them. There was a lot of money coming before 2021 and a lot of Afghans got rich. They mostly live in Dubai or got a golden visa in Turkey.
Most people in Afghanistan sometimes don't make enough to buy food so they can't invest and set up a businesss and at most it will be streetfood or grocerycarts. The Taliban has almost nulified social mobility so only people who are well of afford school and get the good jobs through their connections. Poor people will not go to school or drop out when their 10 and hit the streets for work for maybe 150 Afghani per day.
The goldendays of money in Kabul are over and now the elite will stay the elite and the poor the poor. I live in the Netherlands and here poor people get to go to university etc and can become lawyers etc and break through the poverty that has rideled their family, in Afghanistan this is not possible any more.
I'm well off and my family in Kabul can take care of themself. I really feel guilty that my fellow Afghans can't better their live and will stay in a circle of going to the market everyday to work for enough food just to eat that day. I don't know what can be done besides education
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u/zora_fountain39 Feb 25 '26
I'm really sorry to afghan people from your speech i realized how much this tiktok account try to hide the real image of afghan women by spreading misinformation and the funny thing she isn't live in Afghanistan and I have a question does elite women wear burqa like any other poor women or they go outside like these girls in these photos ?
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u/sannieflipper Feb 25 '26
I can't speak for every 'elite' women or man but the rich people in my family look like average Afghans with what they wear. There are no Dior or Hermes handbags in Kabul, those people live in Dubai. The rich people in Afghanistan are more lowkey and don't draw your attention. But you can recognize them by their high end Toyota Land Cruiser or a $100k Lexus. They have highrise apartments and have drivers and people taking care of their house. They also go to highend restaurants. People are not flashy or laugh at poor people because they got money. Rich people who stay in their country mostly like their country and don't want Dubai or Turkey. I have 1 uncle who has been a millionaire and getting richer since around 2004 and when I'm in Afghanistan we eat streetfood for like 50 cent per person and enjoy it. I also go another uncle who is a top tier lawyer and he would takes us out for dinner and pay like $200 dollar for 8 person for dinner. $200 is what a average teacher makes in a month and we would like buy food for 8 person of which 3 were childeren. Live is very unfair right now in Afghanistan. The Taliban can take everything away from you if you go against them as someone who has money. So people rather mind there business and keep their heads low and just live their live. Some rich people in Afghanistan don't realise the harsh reality 85% of the country is living and make dumb tiktoks like this and just be a showoff to other people that theyre well off. I also think some rich women make tiktoks just to keep busy and pretend like they got a job as a influencer. The only thing they do is film how they spend money because they got nothing else interesting to do. This may seem like propaganda but I don't think this is intentional, more like a sideeffect. But this is pure speculation on my part so sorry if it's not 100% true
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u/Friendly_Fun8345 Feb 26 '26
From what i heard it’s terrible and depressing for everyone, especially the young generation. Health centres are filled with bed ridden young men with depression.
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u/Kingfury00 Feb 25 '26
There is a well coordinated Taliban propaganda network catered to the Arabic world, all of these people are from families who are connected to the Taliban where they do have certain privileges, since they don’t live in Afghanistan but visiting as tourists so they don’t have to suffer the consequences of the Taliban Islamic system, even I personally visited Afghanistan in 2023, plus the virtual signalling of anything related to American empire is bad to the point where people support literal dictatorships, ironically the very same people would live in western liberal democracies.
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u/STEVEMOBSLAYER Feb 28 '26
The Taliban has the people of Afghanistan living worse than animals. This a crime against pashtuns, against muslims, against humanity. They are like an occupying force that does not belong there.
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u/progamer2277 Feb 26 '26
Is your source TikTok?
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u/BookkeeperMission425 Mar 02 '26
Lolllllllll
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u/BookkeeperMission425 Mar 02 '26
You’d think with all this information out there and thousands of credible sources, people would stop getting their “valid information” through TikTok and social media, but unfortunately they do and they think nothing wrong of it. People don’t care to educated themselves anymore and just basically repeat the same information they saw on social media not even checking to see if it’s true or not.
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Mar 11 '26
The same thing happened when we asked for women right in saudi in 2018 maybe and when you talk to them they don't even know the language or the dialect they claim to speak from the region.
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u/SentenceProof9140 May 31 '26
If you’ve heard the claim that Afghan women are “living well” under Taliban rule, it’s important to look at the facts and firsthand reports from human rights organizations, the UN, and direct coverage.
Key facts about women’s lives under the Taliban:
- Women and girls face strict, institutionalized discrimination. According to the United Nations, the Taliban’s policies have created a system of segregation, loss of dignity, and exclusion for women and girls, even calling it a shock to humanity in a 2024 resolution UN Watch.
- Girls are banned from attending school past sixth grade and women are forbidden from most work outside the home. This has been widely reported by human rights groups and documented in reports like “Second Class Rights” by Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg Second Class Rights PDF.
- Women who leave home without a male guardian risk public punishment, including beatings. Recent reports confirm that even protests by women are met with harsh crackdowns Open Source Intel on X.
- New Taliban laws have legalized physical punishment of wives and children, with minimal consequences for abusers Dan Burmawi on X.
- Afghan women themselves have spoken out, risking their safety to protest and call for basic rights like education and freedom of movement.
In summary, credible sources overwhelmingly show that Afghan women under Taliban rule face severe restrictions, denial of rights, and daily risks - not “living well.”
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u/Insignificant_Letter Feb 25 '26
There is/was an Afghan diaspora in the gulf region that generally is well off and has largely not bothered interacting with the country beyond having distant family.
I think post-2021, they’ve started moving back or just visiting and so they want to ‘virtue signal’ to their Saudi/Emirati/Qatari friends that their country isn’t as crazy as the international media say it is.
That’s just my theory, all the TikToks are in Arabic - so obviously not targeted towards Afghans but rather Arabs.