Carla Garapedian, producer/director of the Dispatches programme, Lifting the Veil, assesses how far life has changed for women in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime

Whack! The soldier's baton hit me hard against my back, knocking out any illusions I had about women's progress here in Afghanistan.

The burka – the head-to-toe garment that has come to symbolise women's oppression in Afghanistan - is now optional, according to the Karzai government. Yet, my Afghan translator and I were physically punished for not wearing them. I was hit from behind. She was hit square on her chest.

Are women better off now? In our journey across the country, we found women still fearful of being punished if they don't wear their burkas, if they speak without permission from their male relatives, if they venture out into the workplace. After decades of civil war, many are wary of the new government, which is sending mixed messages about what they can and can't do.

Permission required

In Kabul's women's prison, many of the conditions have improved since the Taliban's downfall. But the cells are nearly full again; women are still being incarcerated in violation of their basic human rights for crimes such as travelling without being accompanied by a man or marrying without their families' permission.

'It's wrong to say it was just the Taliban that pressed for the introduction of a radical version of Islamic law. This has always existed in Afghanistan,' says Martin Lau, an expert in Islamic law at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

The Karzai government claims to have overturned Taliban laws and to conform to international standards of human rights. But with trials held in secret, no access to defence lawyers and no hope of bail, the girls in Kabul city prison know better.

Freedom in theory

Certainly, women are being encouraged to go back to work - what little there is. They are buying cosmetics and going to the beauty parlours - activities once banned to them. All over the country we saw government posters urging parents to send their girls back to school. We visited three girls' schools that were all full to the brim.

But for many women, re-entering public life is still risky. Najiba Asseed, a young woman who has returned to Kabul University medical school, wants to become a doctor. She's facing heavy opposition from her husband and death threats from her brother.

Najiba has petitioned the new Women's Ministry for a divorce. Despite the fact that her country is desperate for doctors, that one child in four dies before the age of five and that Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, Najiba was told to quit medical school, go back to her husband and have children. 'The government has given women the right to work and to be educated,' she told us, 'but they will not defend any other rights.' If a woman has no right to divorce a man who forbids her to work or receive an education, those rights may as well not exist for her.

Under attack

In this unstable context, attacks against women are on the increase. We tracked down Azda, an 11-year-old girl, who had had acid thrown at her and whose school was firebombed. Since we filmed her, at least seven other schools have been attacked. UNICEF representative Eric Laroche says: 'A girl that goes to school and sees her school being burnt down is deprived of her rights.'

A teacher in Kandahar was threatened with death if she continued working. 'If you go to school I will kill you,' a man told her. He threatened to cut her up into little pieces. He was eventually arrested. 'He was al Qaeda,' the local militia captain told us. 'Al Qaeda's purpose is to try to damage the government,' he said. 'They're making propaganda, putting pamphlets around, like warnings.'

But not all the attacks are coming from the Taliban or al-Qaeda. A 17- year old girl was killed in a neighbourhood near Kandahar. We found the girl's mother. She told us the girl was killed by her brother because she was seeing a boy without his permission. He used a Kalashnikov - not acid.

Women were targets even before the Taliban came to power - especially between 1994 and 1996, when Kabul was bombed by competing factions of the mujahedeen. Women not wearing burkas were accused of sympathising with the Russians, the country's former occupiers. They were attacked, and in many cases raped, by groups anxious to prove their ideological credentials. So it was then; so it is now.

Shame and punishment

The gang-rape we documented in Lifting the Veil is part of this violent culture. In northern Afghanistan, power is constantly shifting between four ethnic groups: Pashtuns; Tajiks; Hazaras; and Uzbeks. The soldiers there rape girls because they know the family of a rape victim will often move away from their home, to escape the shame. Rape has become an instrument of ethnic cleansing.

The 14-year-old girl we interviewed was brutally raped by four soldiers. Her father and brother now beat her because she is no longer a virgin; she has brought shame on her family. 'Unfortunately, this is the Afghanistan culture,' says Dr Ahamd, an Afghan doctor who worked in Mazar-i-Sharif for 12 years for the Halo Trust. 'If one girl has been raped by somebody, either by force or by agreement [in some cases families have invited the soldiers in], even her father wants to kill her. Even if it's not her fault.'

I don't know why the government isn't stopping them. I don't know why the American soldiers aren't stopping them,' Tajwar Kakar, the Karzai government's women's deputy minister, tells us. 'Isn't part of the problem that western governments are supporting the Northern Alliance and the attacks are coming from the Northern Alliance – so your hands are tied?' I ask. 'I'm sorry I can't answer this,' she replies, 'because I'm part of this government.' The Karzai government includes members of the Northern Alliance.

Losing ground

Women in government are themselves under threat. Three months ago, the first women's minister, Sima Samar, was forced out office after being accused of not fully supporting the new Islamic republic.

For now, at least, the message is clear. The Taliban is dead. Long live the Taliban.

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