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A prohibition on contact between unrelated women and men meant many women’s wounds went untended and some were left trapped under rubble after a deadly earthquake, witnesses said.
Sept. 4, 2025Updated 2:13 p.m. ET
The first rescue workers reached Bibi Aysha’s village more than 36 hours after an earthquake devastated settlements across eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous areas on Sunday. But instead of bringing relief, the sight of them heightened her fears; not a single woman was among them.
Afghan cultural norms, enforced even in emergencies by the ruling Taliban, forbid physical contact between men and women who are not family members. In the village of Andarluckak, in Kunar Province, the emergency team hurriedly carried out wounded men and children, and treated their wounds, said Ms. Aysha, 19. But she and other women and adolescent girls, some of them bleeding, were pushed aside, she said.
“They gathered us in one corner and forgot about us,” she said. No one offered the women help, asked what they needed or even approached them.
Tahzeebullah Muhazeb, a male volunteer who traveled to Mazar Dara, also in Kunar Province, said that members of the all-male medical team there were hesitant to pull women out from under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Trapped and injured women were left under stones, waiting for women from other villages to reach the site and dig them out.
“It felt like women were invisible,” said Mr. Muhazeb, 33. He added, “The men and children were treated first, but the women were sitting apart, waiting for care.”
If no male relative was present, he said, rescue workers dragged dead women out by their clothes, so as not to make skin contact.
