Afghan Women’s Organizations Push Back After US Scholar Says Afghan Refugees ‘Should Not Fear Repatriation’
In an exclusive interview with The Media Line, analyst Cheryl Benard defended her controversial essay, which women’s rights activists say whitewashes the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies
[Islamabad] Last week, the American political scientist Cheryl Benard published an article in The National Review arguing that the thousands of Afghan refugees whose temporary legal protection in the US has recently been revoked shouldn’t resist returning to Afghanistan. In the article, published under the headline “Afghan Refugees Should Not Fear Repatriation,” Benard specifically addressed those critiquing US policy shift from a feminist perspective, arguing that reports of women’s oppression in Afghanistan are overblown and cherry-picked.
The article was published on the day that the refugees’ Temporary Protected Status expired in the US. Explaining the decision to allow the status to lapse, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said that “Afghanistan has an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevents them from returning to their home country.”
Benard echoed those sentiments in her article, provoking swift backlash. Dozens of Afghan women’s rights groups and civil society organizations published a letter calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate proceedings against Benard, accusing her of misrepresenting Taliban crimes and aiding the whitewashing of a regime widely condemned for systemic gender-based oppression.
In the letter, which was addressed to ICC, the United Nations, and the US government, the organizations highlighted the fact that Benard is the wife of former US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.
“Ms. Benard’s involvement is not limited to her position as a researcher or commentator. It is directly tied to the prominent political role of her husband,” the organizations wrote, linking Benard’s views to her husband’s role in negotiating the 2020 Doha Agreement with the Taliban, which critics say helped legitimize the group internationally.
In an exclusive interview with The Media Line, Benard stood by her remarks, stating that her views are based on personal observation and professional expertise.
As a political scientist, risk analyst, and long-time Afghanistan scholar, I shared my assessment that Afghanistan is safe for refugees to return.
“As a political scientist, risk analyst, and long-time Afghanistan scholar, I shared my assessment that Afghanistan is safe for refugees to return,” she said, describing a recent visit where she saw women working and appearing in public without male guardians. She added that the US government’s decision to allow Temporary Protected Status to lapse “was based on the review of available facts.”
Benard, who describes herself in the article as a feminist, noted that she is in favor of women’s education and said that denying girls the right to an education is “unfair and unacceptable.”
She insisted that the return of Afghan exiles—including educated professionals and activists—could help reshape the country from within.
“I hope this can be replaced by serious dialogue—including with the Taliban, who seek citizens’ return, recognition, and lifted sanctions—ideally covering female education and livelihoods,” Benard said of the response to her essay.
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When the Taliban was first in power between 1996 and 2001, the group enforced a rigid interpretation of Islamic law, severely restricting women’s rights—including their freedom of movement, access to education, employment, healthcare, and public life—along with imposing a strict dress code. Since the group’s return to power in 2021, numerous reports have surfaced alleging widespread human rights abuses, particularly targeting women through harassment and curbs on education, work, and mobility.
Fearing retribution and prosecution, thousands of Afghan citizens—including former officials and women’s rights advocates—fled the country. On Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that around 110,000 Afghans faced the risk of persecution if forced to return.
“There are journalists, human rights activists, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, musicians, singers, or some people who have worked in previous governments, or they are female-only families,” the UNHCR official added. The agency has said all returns should be voluntary, dignified, and sustainable.
In addition to the Afghan refugees currently staying in Western countries, there are over 44,000 Afghans approved for relocation currently in Pakistan awaiting resettlement, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
Amid fears of a forced return to Afghanistan, the organizations that responded to Benard’s article called on the ICC to investigate her role. They also called on the institutions associated with her to suspend or review any affiliations that may have contributed to “legitimizing abusive regimes.”
They called for legal action against those complicit in the continued violation of their rights and demanded an international hearing to examine the role of “Western elites” in legitimizing the regimes, particularly in the context of Afghanistan.
“To urge Afghan women to ‘go back and reclaim their rights’ under one of the world’s most repressive regimes is deeply insensitive,” Maria Noori, founder of the Afghanistan Women’s Light of Freedom Movement, told The Media Line.
Noori, a direct witness to the Taliban’s repression who is now living in exile, said she found Benard’s recent article “not only deeply offensive but seriously misleading.” She said that the article disregards the experiences of millions of Afghan women who have suffered under a regime that has “systematically erased women from public life, denied us education, work, and freedom of movement”.
She noted that such statements as Benard’s “serve no one but those who benefit from silencing Afghan women, whitewashing the Taliban, and undermining our calls for international justice and accountability.”
Marzia Hashmi, a women’s rights activist who was imprisoned by Afghan special forces in 2023, expressed surprise at Benard’s suggestion that Afghan women in exile should consider returning. She told The Media Line that such a recommendation ignores the lived realities of women under Taliban control.
Girls are barred from studying beyond the fifth grade, women are forbidden from hearing the voice of a stranger, and even denied the right to have skylights in their kitchens so they cannot glimpse the outside world.
“Girls are barred from studying beyond the fifth grade, women are forbidden from hearing the voice of a stranger, and even denied the right to have skylights in their kitchens so they cannot glimpse the outside world,” she said.
(In her article, Benard wrote that even before the Taliban returned to power, “entire regions of the country never had anything beyond the Taliban’s current cutting-off point for girls, many had no schools for girls at all, and some had no schools whatsoever for anybody.” She also noted that private schools in Afghanistan are allowed to educate girls of all ages.)
Natiq Malikzada, a London-based political analyst and human rights researcher, condemned Benard’s essay as “more than misinformation.” “It risks furnishing a veneer of legitimacy to a pattern of gender persecution in Afghanistan that human rights advocates believe amounts to gender apartheid,” he told The Media Line.
The Taliban’s bans on girls’ secondary education, female employment, and women’s freedom of movement constitute “persecution against an identifiable group” carried out as part of a state-like policy, in violation of Article 7 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, Malikzada said. He added that calls for asylum seekers to return and confront their oppressors echo rhetoric sometimes used by states to justify forced returns in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention’s non-refoulement principle.
By citing Kabul cafes and perfume shops as signs of normalcy, she gives the Taliban the optics they need to unlock frozen funds and seek recognition, without real change to their anti-women, anti-rights policies.
“By citing Kabul cafes and perfume shops as signs of normalcy, she gives the Taliban the optics they need to unlock frozen funds and seek recognition, without real change to their anti-women, anti-rights policies,” he said.
Giorgia Pietropaoli, a leading human rights activist and Afghan affairs expert based in Italy, noted that the threat of forced repatriation places thousands at renewed risk—journalists, judges, lawyers, students, professors, and others who once served the Afghan state are all vulnerable.
To claim that the Taliban support the well-being of Afghan women is to be complicit with a regime that has violently stripped them of their basic rights and continues to enforce sweeping restrictions, Pietropaoli told The Media Line.
She urged the international community to raise its voice in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan, who face a daily struggle to defend the most basic human rights.
Momina Fatima, former deputy head of Islamic studies at Kabul University, defended Benard’s article in an interview with The Media Line.
All Afghan citizens, especially women living in the United States and European countries, should return home so they can protect future generations from what I see as the harmful effects of Western lifestyles and liberal values.
“All Afghan citizens, especially women living in the United States and European countries, should return home so they can protect future generations from what I see as the harmful effects of Western lifestyles and liberal values,” Fatima said, describing Afghanistan as safe, particularly for women.
She said that she has long been critical of US policy on Afghanistan but now credits American authorities for a “correct decision” regarding Afghan expatriates.
