By Matin Mehrab*
When her husband died in a traffic accident in 2019, Huma* found herself shouldering the financial responsibility of her family. She inherited a house and a hectare of farmland in Ghorian district in Herat province, an agricultural area renowned for its saffron production.
The quality of Afghan saffron rivals that of Iran and Spain and demands high prices on the world market. As their hectare of land is ideal for growing saffron, Huma and her teenage daughters, with the aid of their younger brother, decided to carry on following her husband’s death. Huma already had considerable agricultural experience, not only working its fields alongside her husband but also taking courses organized by the Herat Agriculture Department for women involved in saffron production.
“The first year was a trial, given that my husband had previously shouldered all responsibilities, and there were many aspects we were unfamiliar with. However, leveraging the knowledge from the training courses and the practical experience with my husband, we began our journey of saffron cultivation,” Huma tells Zan Times. “During that year, our queries related to saffron cultivation were resolved by our kin and neighbours.”
Huma and her children managed to harvest four kilograms of pure, dry saffron in their inaugural year. Though down from the yields during her late husband’s tenure, when the land yielded up to eight kilograms of saffron, the high price of saffron – it then fetched 45,000 afghani per kilogram – enabled Huma to earn a total income of 180,000 afghani.
Demand was strong, so Huma did not encounter any challenges selling her saffron. Her primary clientele were commercial entities exporting saffron to Europe, Persian Gulf countries, and India.
As they gained more experience, Huma and her children were able to boost their production to eight kilos a year by 2022. Simultaneously, the surging price of saffron bolstered her family’s income. Huma envisioned a prosperous future. She mulled buying additional farmland to boost her production levels and considered the prospect of packaging and exporting her own products rather than selling to commercial ventures.
However, her aspirations were derailed in the summer of 2022. According to Huma and two other sources, that’s when the Taliban issued an oral directive banning women from working on agricultural lands. Huma recounts that the rationale behind the Taliban’s decision was “if women were to work in agricultural fields, they would be visible to non-relative men.” Huma states that this decision was conveyed to them verbally through local mosques and via reminders given by village elders.
This Taliban decree upended Huma’s life and those of other women in the saffron industry.
Huma had no choice but to outsource the work formerly done by herself and her daughters to male workers and farmers. After accounting for their wages, Huma and her children were left with little. Desperate for steady funds, she felt compelled to lease her land for 200,000 afghani per year.
Now, Huma and her children sustain themselves by cleaning houses and producing milk and eggs.
Huma’s fate is shared by other women in the saffron industry. Two sources in the Pashtun Zarghun district tell Zan Times that the same Taliban oral directive was also shared in their area through mosque imams and village elders.
Parwana*, a woman in her mid-30s, used to make enough to cover her family’s expenses by working in saffron fields in Pashtun Zarghun district. Each autumn, during the saffron harvest period, she earned up to 500 afghani a day picking saffron clusters. She was so skilled that she could make up to 50,000 afghani a year, using those earnings to buy household items and groceries such as rice, oil, and flour. Those earnings ended with the Taliban decree. “In the previous years, I would both go into the fields and also clean the saffron,” she explains to Zan Times. “Now I can only clean the saffron indoors for a few weeks a year at most, and my income does not exceed 15,000 to 20,000 thousand afghani.”
Now, Parwana is under economic pressure, thanks to her reduced income and her husband’s meager income from repairing bicycles.
While there are no precise statistics on the number of women involved in saffron cultivation in Herat province, it’s apparent that women used to constitute a significant share of active workers in this sector.
Removing women from agricultural work has not only deprived many women of their income source but has also adversely affected saffron-related businesses, explains Humira Rasikh*, a member of the Women’s Chamber of Commerce in Herat province who has spent the past decade working in the saffron cultivation and production sector. Until a year ago, women made up the majority of the workforce of her saffron-related businesses, which include cultivation as well as a processing and packaging centre.
“It’s evident that the Taliban’s orders have negatively affected women’s work over the past two years. In our company, out of around 100 women, only about 40 women remain, with 30 in the packaging centre and around 10 working in the fields clandestinely,” Rasikh tells Zan Times. She says that the Taliban’s order prohibiting women from working in agricultural fields has compelled many women to “disguise themselves as men.” With most women now afraid to work in the fields, “we have been forced to hire men, leading to increased labour costs, particularly in the past year and this year, when water scarcity impeded a fruitful harvest,” she adds.
The Taliban restrictions on women working in public extend beyond Herat province and its prestigious saffron industry.
A source from the Women’s Chamber of Commerce in Afghanistan informs Zan Times that numerous restrictions focused on rural areas have created a plethora of economic issues for women.
In addition, the chamber of commerce source states that restrictions are far more severe in rural areas than in cities, but the harshness of those measures have largely gone unnoticed due to limited media access.
Back in Herat, Mohammad Hashim*, a village elder in Guzara district, explains the impact of such edicts in his area. Before the fall of the former government, many village women had jobs and professions, thanks to foreign and domestic projects and investments, which gave them and their families an important source of income, he explains. Now, they can no longer continue their work. “After the Taliban took control, many women who used to work in fields or sold their own produce are now banned from these activities and are forced to engage in carpet weaving, tailoring, and embroidery at home, selling their products at very low prices,” he tells Zan Times.
In Pashtun Zarghun district, Parwana worries about the impact of no longer earning a good wage in the saffron fields. “The Taliban’s decisions have ruined all our futures,” she says. “I fear that my husband will also not be able to earn for us, and we won’t have money for food. We might have to resort to begging.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Matin Mehrab is the pseudonym of a Zan Times journalist in Afghanistan.
