The agreement, hashed out over months of talks between the Trump administration and the Taliban, is expected to outline steps for the eventual withdrawal of 14,000 US troops and pave the way for future talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Officials said the preliminary deal is not expected to include specific assurances that women will continue to have equal opportunities in education, employment and government. Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the United States. Credit:New York Times Women's rights are supposed to be addressed in the future talks, which could result in a power-sharing arrangement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Although some American and Afghan officials say the Taliban appear to be more receptive to women's rights than in the past, others worry that women will be given lip service in that final accord or left out entirely. "Afghan women have made it loud and clear that they want peace without oppression," said New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat and the only woman on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Trump administration, she said, "needs to fully recognise that Afghan women are our greatest asset to advancing the cause of freedom in this war-torn country".

"Their rights and future must not get lost in these negotiations," she added. After US troops forced the Taliban from power after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, Afghan women literally came out of their homes. Now, more than 3.5 million are enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and 100,000 women attend universities, according to the State Department. American auditors estimate that nearly 85,000 Afghan women work as teachers, lawyers, law enforcement officials and in health care. More than 400 women ran for political office in elections held last northern autumn. Female delegates at the opening of Afghanistan's Grand Assembly in Kabul in April. Credit:New York Times But many of the gains are among women in Kabul, the capital, and in other major cities. In recent years, the Taliban's hold across the country - especially in rural areas - has expanded. The group controls at least 10 per cent of Afghanistan's population - 59 of the country's 407 districts, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Another 119 districts are considered "contested".

As part of the next phase of peace talks, American and Afghan officials are insisting on a permanent cease-fire. But even that will not assure peace for Afghan women, Rahmani said. "When we are talking about peace, and a peaceful environment for all of us, we are not only talking about the absence of guns and bullets and bombs," she said. "We are talking about an environment where human security is present, where people will live free of all forms of violence - not only physical, but emotional, too." The debate over women's rights in a final deal is a widely expected to split along each side's interpretation of the role of women in Islam, Afghanistan's state religion. Under the Afghan Constitution, adopted in 2004, men and women have equal legal rights and duties. The constitution specifically outlaws discrimination and requires a "balanced education for women". It states that all of its provisions and laws adhere to Islamic rules and faith. In a statement in February, the Taliban said they recognised that women have certain rights under Islam, including access to education and jobs, property inheritance and the ability to choose a husband.

The Taliban's policy, according to the statement, which was released at a forum in Moscow, "is to protect the rights of women in a way that neither their legitimate rights are violated nor their human dignity and Afghan values are threatened". But the statement also described immoral and indecent influences by the West and religions that it said have encouraged women to violate Afghan customs "under the name of women's rights". It cited "dissemination of Western and non-Afghan and non-Islamic drama serials" as evidence of the corruption of Afghan women. Afghan officials and activists who attended the negotiations between the Taliban and the US said that informal talks with members of the extremist group revealed that the Taliban have changed since 2001 - and may be even more open to women's rights. "One thing that we noticed is that the Taliban were not like those Taliban that they were 20 or 18 years before," Asila Wardak, a human rights activist who attended the negotiations, which were held in Doha, Qatar, said at a forum in July at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She said there were "many chances" for Afghan women to talk to Taliban negotiators, and to share their concerns, at the discussions in Doha.

Experts on Afghan issues remain sceptical of Taliban claims that they support women's rights - a declaration that, at best, is largely untested. At worst, it is defied by continued attacks, threats and oppression against women by Taliban members in local districts across Afghanistan even as their leaders say they want peace. Attacks this year against girls' schools in Taliban territory near the western city of Farah, and the extremists' forced closure of a radio station that employed women in Ghazni province, in the country's east, indicate otherwise. (Taliban officials have denied responsibility for the attacks outside Farah, although graffiti sprayed on the walls of the schools praised the extremist group.) Sabzina Merzayee, 12, sits in a classroom in Shaidayee, near Herat in western Afghanistan, in June. Her family had to flee their home province of Ghor, to the east of Herat, after Sabzina's school was burnt down. Credit:Kate Geraghty "You don't have to look at 2001 to see what the Taliban has done in areas that it has held - you can look at 2017, 2018, 2019," said Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations' women and foreign policy program. "It's certainly much harder for women who are living in Taliban-influenced areas to go to work, to hold jobs, for girls to go to school and for women to be in any kind of public sphere," she said.