What Afghanistan Has Lost in Five Years—and Why It Should Matter to Us All

A Personal Reflection and Analysis of Five Years of Economic and Human Loss

Manizha Wafeq 
August 15th, 2026 

It was early morning in Virginia on August 14, 2021. I woke up and rushed to my phone and computer to see what was happening in Afghanistan, to check on my colleagues and the women business owners I worked with as the leader of the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

I had returned from Afghanistan only two weeks earlier, after spending two months there. Those first two weeks of August were among the most difficult, incomprehensible, and frightening days I had ever experienced. Every day, another province seemed to fall. My WhatsApp messages, calls from colleagues, what I was seeing on social media, and the news made me panic. I remember feeling as though my heart was being wrenched inside my chest.

Yet I kept telling myself to stay calm. People were depending on me. My colleagues were looking for answers. Women business owners were frightened. My family was frightened. And I needed to understand what was happening so I could make the right decisions for the people I felt responsible for.

For almost eight hours that day, I called people, exchanged messages, and searched for answers. At around 2:00 p.m. Virginia time, I remembered an international contact in Kabul whom I trusted. It was already around 11:00 p.m. there, so I texted him. He immediately offered to call.

As soon as we said hello, I wasted no time.

“What is really happening?” I asked.

His response was immediate.

“Manizha, the Republic is finished.”

I sat down.

For a moment, I was silent. I could not process what he had just said. And then I screamed:

“But how? How is this possible?”

This was not the 1990s, when the Taliban took Kabul amid civil war. This was 2021. The international community had been there for twenty years. Afghanistan had a government, a constitution, and institutions. We had built schools, universities, businesses, civil society and media. Women had become ministers, parliamentarians, judges, journalists, professors, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes and community leaders.

He told me there was little time: the Taliban were outside Kabul and could enter within 24 to 36 hours.

I had hundreds of questions, but only one mattered: What should I tell my colleagues to do tomorrow?

He advised me to evacuate the office early Sunday morning, August 15, and send everyone home.

I ended that call carrying a sentence I was still unable to accept: 

“The Republic is finished.”

For twenty years, Afghan women had fought their way into spaces from which they had once been completely excluded. We had studied, worked, built institutions, created businesses, employed other women, advocated for laws and policies, entered government offices and boardrooms, and claimed a place in our country's economic and public life. I had spent years telling women that their businesses mattered, that their voices mattered, that their participation in Afghanistan's economy mattered.

And now, from thousands of miles away in Virginia, I had only hours to figure out how to tell my colleagues to leave the institution we had worked so hard to build and go home.

I did not know then that the next morning—August 15, 2021—would divide our lives into a before and an after.

By the afternoon of August 15 in Kabul—early morning for us in Virginia—the government had collapsed. The president and his close aides had fled, and cabinet ministers and other senior officials had either left or were making their way to Kabul airport. Suddenly, everything changed. I found myself calling everyone I could reach, checking on their safety, collecting passport numbers, and trying to find ways to evacuate them from Kabul. I left my family with my older sister to take care of them. 

Only days earlier, I had been planning with 60 Afghan businesswomen to take them to the Dubai Expo that October. We were planning two or three fashion shows and exhibitions to showcase women’s clothing, jewelry, home décor, dried fruits, carpets, and other products made by Afghan women-owned businesses. We had been thinking about markets, buyers, international exposure, and opportunities for these women to grow their businesses. Then, almost overnight, I went from planning their participation in an international expo to trying to keep them safe in their own country or evacuating them.

That sudden shift from planning for growth, opportunity, and a place for Afghan women in the global marketplace to searching for ways to get those same women to safety was a traumatic experience that I do not think I will ever fully heal from. 

There is so much more to that long August 15th, and the rest of the month to share, but right now I can't help but feel compelled to highlight what that day meant for the country and its women and what Afghanistan painfully lost in the dark half a decade. 

It was by no means a perfect country. Poverty, corruption, violence, insecurity, and inequality were widespread. Women had not achieved equality, and progress was uneven between provinces, cities, and rural communities. But the gains were real, and Afghan women had fought hard to build them.

Over two decades, millions of Afghan women and girls had entered schools, universities, workplaces, businesses, courts, newsrooms, government institutions, elected bodies, sports federations, and community leadership structures. These were not abstract policy achievements. They represented an accumulation of human capital, professional experience, businesses, institutions, legal protections, networks, and economic productive capacity that had taken twenty years to build.

Here is an overview of where Afghanistan started when the Taliban were first overthrown, the progress made over the following 20 years, and what has happened during the past half-decade under renewed Taliban rule.

• Education: Almost zero girls in formal schooling in 2001; 3.8 million girls in school by August 2021; 2.4 million girls barred from secondary education since August 2021. Female literacy had reached nearly 30% by August 2021, compared with about 17% in 2001. 
• Higher Education: Zero women in universities in 2001; about 5,000 when universities reopened in 2002; and 100,000+ women enrolled in higher education by August 2021. Today, women are barred from universities, and nearly 8 in 10 women aged 18–29 are neither in education, employment, nor training. 
• Civil Service: Almost no women in the civil service under the Taliban in 2001; approximately 27% of civil servants were women by August 2021. No comparable official figure exists today, but women's employment in the public sector has been largely restricted to areas such as health and some policing functions. 
• Politics: Zero women in political positions under the Taliban in 2001; women held 27% of seats in Parliament and about 21% of provincial council seats by August 2021; formal female political representation has returned to zero over the past five years. 
• Community Leadership: Women were largely excluded from formal community-level decision-making under the Taliban in 2001; by August 2021, around half of Community Development Council membership was structured for women's participation, with more than 134,000 women mobilized as grassroots community leaders; these formal pathways for women's participation have since been largely dismantled or marginalized. 
• Judiciary: Women were excluded from serving as judges under the Taliban in 2001; by August 2021, Afghanistan had at least 257 women judges; women have since been effectively excluded from serving in the judiciary. 
• Legal Profession: Women were largely excluded from practicing law under the Taliban in 2001; by August 2021, approximately 1,500 of Afghanistan's estimated 6,000 defense lawyers were women; women's participation in the legal profession and access to the formal justice system have since been severely constrained. 
• Media: Women were banned from most media work under the Taliban in 2001; by August 2021, approximately 2,756 women were working in Afghanistan's media sector; since the takeover, around 8 in 10 women journalists have been forced out of the profession. 
• Women's Entrepreneurship: Women's formal economic participation was severely restricted under the Taliban in 2001; by August 2021, Afghanistan had approximately 2,500 formal and nearly 60,000 informal women-owned businesses, supporting around 130,000 jobs; women continue to operate businesses today, but under severe restrictions on mobility, finance, markets, and public participation. 
• National Economy: Afghanistan's economy was devastated after decades of conflict in 2001; by 2020, GDP had reached approximately $19.8 billion; the latest complete World Bank data put nominal GDP at approximately $17.8 billion in 2024. 
• GDP per Capita: GDP per capita was extremely low in 2001; it had reached approximately $509 by 2020; the latest complete World Bank data put it at approximately $417 in 2024. 
• Foreign-Exchange Reserves: Afghanistan had very limited foreign-exchange reserves and financial capacity in 2001; reserves had grown to approximately $9.7 billion by 2020; normal access to most of Afghanistan's pre-2021 foreign reserves was disrupted following the takeover. 
• Exports: Afghanistan's formal export economy was extremely limited in 2001; merchandise exports reached approximately $777 million in 2020, with $831 million projected for 2021; five years later, Afghanistan continues to export goods but faces a much larger structural trade deficit, reaching approximately $11.4 billion in FY2025. 

After the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, the collapse of international assistance, banking disruptions, political isolation, drought, declining investment, and other shocks have all contributed to the human and economic crisis in the country, but the economic cost of excluding women can increasingly be measured. 

The ILO estimated that by late 2022, female employment had fallen 25% from its pre-takeover level, compared with a 7% decline for men. Home-based self-employment became the predominant form of women's labor market participation.

UNDP estimates that the continued social and economic exclusion of women will cost Afghanistan approximately $920 million between 2024 and 2026 alone.

Education carries an even larger future bill. UNESCO estimates that if women's exclusion from higher education continues, Afghanistan could lose $9.6 billion in economic potential by 2066. More than 100,000 women were already prevented from resuming university studies, creating the risk that the country will be unable to replace around 600,000 women leaving the workforce over the coming decades. Afghanistan could lack replacements for more than 11,000 female teachers by 2030.

These figures should not be added together; they measure different losses over different periods. But together they reveal the scale of what is happening.

Afghanistan is paying once for excluding women from the economy today, and it will pay again for decades because girls are being prevented from becoming the skilled workers of tomorrow.

What the statistics do not show! 

Yet this five-year story has another side.

Afghan women did not stop working because the environment turned against them. Many created home-based and underground schools for girls. Female lawyers in partnership with their male counterparts continued to serve women clients. Women's civil society, networks, and media continued underground. Entrepreneurs brought their businesses into their homes. They shifted toward food production, handicrafts, tailoring, and other activities they could continue under restrictions. Entrepreneurship became one of the few remaining pathways to economic participation.

In my recent national research with women entrepreneurs across Afghanistan, I saw both the damage and this extraordinary determination: women reported declining revenues, difficulty accessing finance and markets, and mobility restrictions—yet overwhelmingly told us they still wanted to expand.

We should be careful not to romanticize that resilience. Women should not have to demonstrate extraordinary courage simply to earn a living.

But neither should we describe Afghan women only as victims.

They are still building, teaching where they can, producing, selling, employing others, offering health and other services, and finding ways around barriers designed to confine them.

Today, when I look back, what pains me most is not only what Afghan women lost.

It is what Afghanistan lost.

A country's economy can eventually rebuild roads, restore trade, and recover GDP. Human capital operates on a different clock.

The doctor who was never trained, the teacher who never graduated, the entrepreneur whose business was never established, the salaries never earned, the jobs never created, and the taxes never collected do not appear neatly in today's economic statistics.

They appear years later as the economy that could have existed but never did.

That is why what has happened to Afghan women and girls should matter to all of us.

This is not only a women's-rights crisis. It is the systematic underutilization of half of a country's human capital—and no country can sustainably prosper that way.

Five years of exclusion do not create only five years of loss. They can shape Afghanistan's economic and human potential for generations.

Manizha Wafeq is a Program Director for Peace Through Business, a legacy program of the Enterprising Women Foundation.  To learn more or support Peace Through Business, please visit www.enterprisingwomenfoundation.org. More than  2,000 women entrepreneurs have graduated from the Peace Through Business Program since its founding 21 years ago.  

References and Data Sources

Education and higher education

1. UNESCO — The Costs of Suspension of Women’s Higher Education in Afghanistan
   Supports: 100,000+ women unable to resume university; estimated $9.6 billion long-term economic loss; approximately 600,000 women potentially leaving the workforce without replacement; 11,000+ female teachers potentially lacking replacements by 2030.
   UNESCO — Costs of Suspension of Women’s Higher Education 
2. UNESCO — Afghanistan Education Situation Report / Education Crisis
   Supports: 2.4 million figure as of August 2026 
   UNESCO — Afghanistan Education Crisis

Political participation

3. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) — Women in National Parliaments, Afghanistan
   Supports: 67 of 248 members of Afghanistan's lower house were women, or 27%, immediately before the parliamentary system disappeared.
   IPU Parline — Women in National Parliaments 

Employment and labor market

4. International Labour Organization — Women Bear Brunt of Afghanistan Job Losses
   Supports: female employment fell by an estimated 25% between Q2 2021 and Q4 2022, compared with a 7% decline for men; home-based self-employment became the predominant form of women's labor-market participation.
   ILO — Women Bear Brunt of Afghanistan Job Losses 

Economic cost of excluding women

5. UNDP — Afghanistan's Fragile Economic Recovery / 2025 Socio-Economic Review
   Supports the estimate that restrictions on women and girls are projected to cost Afghanistan's economy nearly $920 million between 2024 and 2026.
   UNDP — Economic Impact of Restrictions on Women 
6. UNDP — Afghanistan Socioeconomic Review 2024–2025, published May 2026
   This should be one of your principal five-years-later sources. It covers poverty, employment, women's exclusion, mobility, returnees, declining aid and economic conditions.
   UNDP — Afghanistan Socioeconomic Review 2024–2025 

7. World Bank — Afghanistan Development Update, May 2026
   This should be your principal macroeconomic reference for the 2026 side of the comparison.
   World Bank — Afghanistan Development Update, May 2026 
8. World Bank — Afghanistan's Economy Shows Resilience but Living Standards Are Falling, May 26, 2026
   Supports several of our key figures: 
9. Afghanistan Women's Chamber of Commerce and Industry data — approximately 2,500 formal women-owned businesses, nearly 60,000 informal women-owned enterprises and approximately 130,000 jobs before August 2021. Women’s National Business Agenda published in March 2021. 

Additional sources used in building the baseline

For the complete article, I would also retain these institutional/source categories from our earlier research:

• UN Women — Afghanistan Gender Index 2024 — source for the finding that nearly 8 in 10 women aged 18–29 are neither in education, employment nor training. 
• UN Women — Afghanistan 2025–2026 reporting — women's political exclusion, restrictions, mobility and public participation. 
• UNAMA — Afghanistan justice-sector reports — women judges, lawyers, access to justice and post-2021 judicial restrictions. 
• Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — women in Afghanistan's media before 2021 and the post-takeover collapse in women's media employment. 
• World Bank pre-2021 Afghanistan Development Updates and policy documents — GDP, GDP per capita, foreign reserves, exports, aid dependence, women's civil-service participation and Community Development Councils.