It’s almost laughable to think anyone ever expected the Taliban to respect women’s rights in 2021. Seriously, after years of terror and oppression, people actually believed their hollow promises of moderation? Sure, and maybe pigs will fly over Kabul next. Now, as the Taliban tightens its grip on Afghanistan, it’s becoming clearer by the day that their so-called “moderation” was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Women in Afghanistan are once again seeing their rights stripped away in real time.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, they’ve done everything to erase any notion of female equality. The hope that the group would be more “progressive” this time around is fading faster than the West’s memory of why we were there in the first place. Recently, Afghanistan marked the third anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal with a military parade, complete with their newly acquired U.S. Black Hawk helicopters—because nothing says “we’ve reformed” like parading stolen American war machines. Meanwhile, for the women of Afghanistan, every day is a parade of restrictions, fear, and lost dreams.

A 48-year-old Afghan woman, speaking to the media, described the country as a “graveyard for women’s dreams.” If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, I don’t know what will. Whatever faint signs of moderation may have existed in the early days of Taliban rule have now all but vanished. It’s business as usual in Kabul, with the white-robed morality police enforcing a suffocating, male-dominated theocracy. Women can’t even laugh or raise their voices in public, and the morality police, especially the female enforcers, are more zealous than ever.

To add insult to injury, the Taliban government has doubled down on its war against education. Schools are off-limits to girls, and the idea of women receiving an education is treated like a criminal offense. Once again, Afghan women find themselves silenced—quite literally. If they dare speak too loudly or violate one of the Taliban’s endless dress code rules, they risk arrest. And let’s not forget the morality police, who seem to take sadistic pleasure in hunting down these so-called “violators.”

You’d think after years of warfare and chaos, the Taliban might have learned a thing or two about governing. But no, they’re back to their old tricks, dragging Afghanistan down into a pit of poverty and isolation. Analysts have pointed out that there are factions within the Taliban—moderates and conservatives—but, let’s be real, the hardliners are clearly in charge. Some women, like 24-year-old former university student Sajia, believed there was a more moderate wing of the Taliban eager to bend the rules. But now, with draconian restrictions written into law, any hope for moderation is dead in the water.

It’s a sad day when the only time women’s rights come up in Taliban-led Afghanistan is when the regime tries to use them as a bargaining chip. Yep, that’s right—there’s speculation that the Taliban is walking back women’s rights to strengthen their hand in international negotiations. Afghanistan’s international recognition is frozen, its aid cut off, and its economy in shambles. What better way to drum up sympathy or negotiation leverage than to pretend you might restore some rights? But for Afghan women, this is no game of diplomacy—it’s life or death.

When the Taliban first took Kabul, some experts thought the group might be forced to soften its stance because it would need to govern a more cosmopolitan city like Kabul. They believed the Taliban fighters, who had known nothing but war since the Soviet invasion of 1979, would be more open-minded once peace set in. But even peace has brought its own set of problems.

And yet, while these former fighters grapple with the complexities of office work, Afghanistan’s women are left to fight for their very existence. Their futures, hopes, and dreams are being buried under the weight of a regime that promised moderation but has only delivered misery.