好英语网“一切都没了”：塔利班统治一年后，阿富汗社会“开倒车”
KABUL, Afghanistan — Girls are barred from secondary schools and women from traveling any significant distance without a male relative. Men in government offices are told to grow beards, wear traditional Afghan clothes and prayer caps, and stop work for prayers.
阿富汗喀布尔——女孩被禁止读中学，女性出远门必须有男性亲属陪同。政府办公室的男人被告知要蓄须，穿传统的阿富汗衣服，戴祈祷帽，在祈祷时间停下手中的工作。
Music is officially banned, and foreign news broadcasts, TV shows and movies have been removed from public airwaves. At checkpoints along the streets, morality police chastise women who are not covered from head to toe in all-concealing burqas and headpieces in public.
音乐被正式禁止，外国新闻广播、电视节目和电影已从公共频道中删除。在街道沿线的检查站，道德警察在公共场合严惩那些没有用罩袍和头巾从头到脚遮盖全身的女性。
自塔利班掌权一年以来，日常生活受到越来越多的限制，美国资助的20年改革成果被逆转。
A year into Taliban rule, Afghanistan has seemed to hurtle backward in time. The country’s new rulers, triumphant after two decades of insurgency, have reinstituted an emirate governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law and issued a flood of edicts curtailing women’s rights, institutionalizing patriarchal customs, restricting journalists and effectively erasing many vestiges of an American-led occupation and nation-building effort.
塔利班统治一年后，阿富汗似乎穿梭到了过去。新统治者在20年的叛乱后获胜，重新建立了一个严守伊斯兰教法的酋长国，发布了大量法令，限制女性权利，将父权习俗制度化，限制记者，并有效地抹去了在美国领导占领下的许多痕迹以及国家建设的努力。
For many Afghans — particularly women in cities — the sense of loss has been devastating. Before the Taliban seized power, some young people realized ambitions of becoming doctors, lawyers and government officials, and explored international opportunities, as well.
对于许多阿富汗人，尤其是城市中的女性，这种失落感是毁灭性的。在塔利班掌权之前，一些年轻人实现了成为医生、律师和政府官员的抱负，并可以去国外寻找机会。
“Now it’s gone — all of it,” said Zakia Zahadat, 24, who used to work in a government ministry after she earned a college degree. She is mostly confined to home these days, she said. “We have lost the power to choose what we want.”
“现在都没了，一切都没了，”24岁的扎基亚·扎哈达特说，她在获得大学学位后曾在政府部门工作。她说，这些天她大部分时间待在家里。“我们已经失去了选择我们想要的东西的权力。”
To enforce their decrees and stamp out dissent, the new Taliban government has employed police state tactics like door-to-door searches and arbitrary arrests — drawing widespread condemnation from international human rights monitors. Those tactics have instilled an undercurrent of fear in the lives of those who oppose their rule, and have cut off the country from millions in development aid and foreign assistance as it slips again into pariah state status.
为了执行他们的法令并消灭异议，新的塔利班政府采用了警察国家策略，例如挨家挨户搜查和任意逮捕——这引起了国际人权监督员的广泛谴责。这些策略在反对他们统治的人的生活中灌输了一种恐惧的暗流，并在该国再次陷入弃儿国家状态时切断了数百万的发展援助和外国援助。
That international isolation is exacerbating an economic and humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the country since the Western-backed government collapsed last year, and the country’s alienation is likely to deepen, since American officials accused the Taliban of harboring the leader of Al Qaeda this month.
这种国际孤立正在加剧自去年西方支持的政府垮台以来席卷该国的经济和人道主义危机，而且美国官员本月指责塔利班窝藏基地组织领导人，该国与外界的疏远可能会加深。
Millions became unemployed after jobs with foreign embassies, militaries and NGOs vanished practically overnight, malnourished children have flooded Kabul’s hospitals in recent months and more than half the population faces life-threatening food insecurity, according to the United Nations.
据联合国称，在外国大使馆、军队和非政府组织的工作几乎在一夜之间消失后，数百万人失业，近几个月来，喀布尔的医院接诊大量营养不良的儿童，超过一半的人口面临的粮食无保障已经达到危及生命的程度。
In one way, however, the country has been better off: It is largely at peace, after decades of war that tore families apart and left no corner of Afghanistan untouched.
然而，这个国家从某个方面来说变好了：几十年的战争使家庭支离破碎，阿富汗的每个角落都受到了影响，而现在它基本上处于和平状态。
When Western troops withdrew last year and the war ended, so did a scourge that claimed tens of thousands of Afghan civilian lives. Gone were the American raids and airstrikes, the crossfire between the Afghan security forces and the insurgents, and the indiscriminate Taliban roadside bombs and devastating suicide attacks.
去年，西方军队撤离，战争结束，一场夺去了数万阿富汗平民生命的灾难也随之结束。美国的突袭和轰炸、阿富汗安全部队与叛乱分子之间的交火、塔利班的无差别路边炸弹和毁灭性的自杀式袭击都已一去不复返了。
The relative calm has offered a welcomed respite for Afghans living rural areas, particularly in the south, whose lives were upended by fighting over the past two decades.
相对平静为生活在农村地区的阿富汗人提供了一个令人欢喜的喘息机会，特别是在南部，他们的生活在过去20年的战斗中被打乱了。
So far, the Taliban have also avoided returning to the brutal public spectacles of flogging, amputations and mass executions that marked their first rule in the 1990s and widely turned international opinion against their rule.
到目前为止，塔利班还没有重现1990年代首次掌权时标志性的公开鞭笞、截肢和大规模处决等残酷场面，这些做法曾使国际舆论普遍反对他们的统治。
But the Taliban’s restrictions, and the economic collapse that accelerated after they seized control of the country in August 2021, have had an outsized effect on the capital, Kabul, where the long occupation by Western forces had profoundly affected day-to-day life in the city.
但塔利班的限制措施，以及他们在2021年8月夺取该国控制权后加速的经济崩溃对首都喀布尔产生了巨大影响，西方军队的长期占领深刻影响了这座城市的日常生活。
Before the Taliban seized power, men and women picnicked together in parks on weekends and chatted over cappuccinos in its coffee shops. Girls in knee-length dresses and jeans tore around skate parks and built robots in after school programs. Clean-shaven men wore Western suits to work in government offices, where women held some high-ranking positions.
在塔利班夺取政权之前，男人和女人周末一起在公园里野餐，在咖啡店里喝着卡布奇诺聊天。穿着及膝连衣裙和牛仔裤的女孩们在滑板公园里跑来跑去，在课后活动中组装机器人。刮了胡子的男人穿着西装在政府办公室工作，一些高级职位由女性担任。
Over the past two decades, Western donors touted many of those facets of life as signal achievements of their intervention. Now the Taliban’s vision for the country is once again reshaping the social fabric.
在过去的20年里，西方捐助者将阿富汗生活中的许多方面宣扬为他们干预的标志性成就。现在，塔利班对该国的愿景正在再次重塑社会结构。
Thousands of women who served as lawyers, judges, soldiers and police officers are no longer at their posts. Most working women have been restricted to jobs in education or health care, serving fellow women.
数千名担任律师、法官、士兵和警察的女性离职。大多数职业女性仅限于从事教育或医疗保健工作，为其他女性服务。
The Taliban’s scrubbing of women from public spaces today feels like being jerked back in time, many say, as if the lives they built over the past 20 years seem to disappear more with each passing day.
许多人说，今天塔利班将女性从公共场所清除的行为感觉就像穿越到了过去，仿佛她们在过去20年中建立的生活正在一天天消失。
Marghalai Faqirzai, 44, came of age during the first Taliban government. She married at 17 and spent most of her time at home. “Women didn’t even know they had rights then,” she said.
现年44岁的玛格莱·法基尔扎伊长大成人之时正逢塔利班的上一次掌权。她17岁结婚，大部分时间在家里度过。“当时女性甚至不知道她们有权利，”她说。
But in recent years, Ms. Faqirzai earned a university degree, attending school alongside one of her daughters. Another daughter, Marwa Quraishi, 23, attended a university and worked in a government ministry before she was fired by the Taliban last summer.
但这几年，法基尔扎伊获得了大学学位，与她的一个女儿一起上学。另一个女儿，23岁的玛瓦·古莱希，在去年夏天被塔利班解雇之前曾就读于一所大学并在政府部门工作。
“I always assumed my life would be better than my mother’s,” Ms. Quraishi said. “But now I see that life will actually get much worse for me, for her — for all us.”
“我一直认为我的生活会比我妈妈的好，”古莱希说。“但现在我看到，对我、对她、对我们所有人来说，生活实际上会变得更糟。”
With the restrictions on women, crackdown on freedom of expression and policymaking in the Taliban’s interim government confined to a select few men and religious scholars, most Afghans have lost any hope of having a hand in molding the future of their country.
由于对女性的限制、对言论自由的镇压以及塔利班临时政府的政策仅限由少数男性和宗教学者制定，大多数阿富汗人参与塑造国家未来的希望已经破灭。
“Many people have lost their sense of safety, their ability to express themselves,” said Heather Barr, associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. “They’ve lost their voice — any feeling that they could be part of building a country that looks the way they want it to.”
“许多人失去了安全感和表达自我的能力，”人权观察女性权利部副主任希瑟·巴尔说。“他们已经失去了自己的声音，失去了任何他们可以参与建设一个他们心目中的国家的感觉。”
Before the Western government collapsed last year, Fereshta Alyar, 18, had been in 12th grade and preparing to take the national university entrance exam. Every day she spent her mornings doing homework, went to school and to an after-school math program in the afternoons, then returned home to study more.
在去年西方支持的政府垮台之前，18岁的费雷什塔·阿利亚尔已经上12年级，准备参加全国大学入学考试。每天她早上做作业、去学校，下午去上数学课外补习班，然后回到家继续学习。
For months after the Taliban seized power and closed girls’ secondary schools indefinitely, she fell into a deep depression — the seemingly endless possibilities for her future vanished in an instant. Now she spends her days at home, trying to muster the willpower to study her old English language textbooks alone. Like many of her old classmates, Ms. Alyar survives on the hope of one day leaving the country, she says.
在塔利班掌权并无限期关闭女子中学后的几个月里，她陷入了深深的抑郁之中——曾经看似无限可能的未来瞬间消失了。现在她在家里呆着，试图鼓起勇气拿起旧英语教科书自学。她说，像她的许多曾经的同学一样，阿利亚尔希望有一天能离开这个国家。
The Taliban insist that they have deep public support for these changes. The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention, which has issued the decrees, says that the edicts have helped restore Afghanistan’s traditional status as a strictly observant Islamic nation.
塔利班坚称，这些改变有广泛的公众支持。颁布法令的促进美德与预防部表示，法令有助于恢复阿富汗作为一个严守教义的伊斯兰国家的传统地位。
“All these decrees are for the protection of women, not the oppression of women,” Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesman for the ministry, said in an interview.
“所有这些法令都是为了保护女性，而不是为了压迫女性，”该部门发言人穆罕默德·萨迪克·阿基夫在接受采访时说。
Asked about the women’s travel decree, Mr. Akif, 33, responded: “A woman is a helpless and powerless creature. If a woman goes on a journey alone, during the journey she could face a problem that she cannot solve by herself.” He said long-haul buses and taxis had been instructed not to transport women traveling alone.
被问及有关女性出行的法令时，33岁的阿基夫回答道：“女人是无助又无力的生物。如果一个女人独自出行，在旅途中她可能会遇到一个她自己无法解决的问题。”他说，长途巴士和出租车已被指示不要搭载单独出行的女性。
Music had been banned, Mr. Akif said, “because our Prophet says listening to music develops hypocrisy in the human heart.” Foreign news reports and entertainment programs “turned people against Afghan culture,” Mr. Akif said.
音乐被禁止了，阿基夫说：“因为我们的先知说听音乐会在人心中滋生虚伪。”他说，外国新闻报道和娱乐节目“让人们反对阿富汗文化”。
Men may only visit parks on days reserved for men, he said, because “a man who goes to a park with his family may look at other women in the park, which is not a good thing.”
他说，男性只能在为男性保留的日子里去公园，因为“一个和家人一起去公园的男人可能会看公园里的其他女人，这不是一件好事”。
The Taliban’s initial pledge to open secondary schools for girls nationwide had been viewed by the international community as an important indicator of the Taliban government’s willingness to moderate. When the group’s top religious ideologues reneged on that promise in March, many Western donors halted plans to invest in long-term development programs, aid workers say.
塔利班最初承诺在全国开设女子中学，被国际社会视为塔利班政府温和意愿的重要标志。援助人员说，当塔利班的主要宗教理论家在3月份背弃这一承诺时，许多西方捐助者停止了投资长期发展项目的计划。
“Among the donor community there is a talk about before March and after March,” said Abdallah Al Dardari, the United Nations Development Program’s resident representative in Afghanistan.
联合国开发计划署驻阿富汗代表阿卜杜拉·达尔达里说：“在捐助者当中，有一个关于3月份之前和3月份之后的说法。”
In rural areas, where conservative, patriarchal social customs have dominated life for decades, many Afghans chafed under the American-backed government, which was stained by corruption and often incapable of providing public services or security.
在农村地区，保守的男尊女卑的社会习俗几十年来一直主导着民众的生活，许多阿富汗人对美国支持的政府感到不满，它腐败不堪，往往无法提供公共服务或安全保障。
And there is little doubt that the sense of constant peril that dominated the country both in its cities and the countryside through 20 years of war has eased.
毫无疑问，在长达20年的战争中，无论是在城市还是乡村，笼罩着这个国家的那种持续不断的危险感已经有所缓解。
“Now I can walk freely, the change is like the difference between the ground and the sky to me,” said Mohammad Ashraf Khan, 50, a resident of Zari district of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.
“现在我可以自由走动了，对我来说，这种变化就像天与地的区别，”50岁的穆罕默德·阿什拉夫·汗说道，他住在阿富汗南部坎大哈省扎里地区。
For most of the past two decades, Mr. Khan was unable to escape the brutality of the war. His 27-year-old grandson was killed on his farm after soldiers with the former government mistook him for a Talib fighter, he said. His 17-year-old nephew was killed by a roadside bomb. The gas station he owned once burned down after fighting broke out on the highway beside it.
在过去20年的大部分时间里，战争的残酷让他无处可逃。他说，他27岁的孙子在自家的农场被杀害，因为前政府的士兵误以为他是塔利班分子。他17岁的侄子被一枚路边炸弹炸死。他开的加油站因为旁边的公路上发生战斗而被烧毁。
Now he can drive for hours down the road to Kandahar city, free of the fear that he could be killed in a sudden flash of fighting. His modest income has been slashed by more than 70 percent with the economic downturn, he said, but that matters less to him than the freedom that came with the end of the war.
现在，他可以在通往坎大哈的公路上开上几个小时的车，而不用担心在突如其来的战斗中丧命。他说，随着经济衰退，他本就微薄的收入减少了70%以上，但对他来说，这不如战争结束带来的自由重要。
“I’m just happy the fighting is over,” he said.
“我很高兴仗打完了，”他说。
But for many Afghans, the sudden economic collapse, soaring food prices and rampant unemployment have been devastating.
但对许多阿富汗人来说，突然的经济崩溃、飙升的食品价格和居高不下的失业率带来了毁灭性的打击。
One recent morning in the village of Alisha, a cluster of mud brick homes tucked into the mountains of Wardak Province, dozens of mothers and rail-thin children gathered outside a home serving as a temporary clinic.
在瓦尔达克省的阿利沙村，一幢幢泥砖房掩映在群山之中。不久前的一个早晨，数十名母亲和赢弱的孩子聚集在一处临时充当诊所的人家外面。
Lahorah, 30, arrived early that morning, her 1-year-old son, Safiullah, tucked beneath the folds of her long, cotton scarf. Before the Taliban seized power, her husband worked as a laborer, building people’s homes or cultivating their farms. He earned a few dollars a day — a meager living, but enough to put food on the table, she said.
30岁的拉赫拉当天一大早就赶到了这里，她用她的长棉围巾裹着一岁的儿子萨菲乌拉。在塔利班掌权之前，她的丈夫在外打工，靠为别人盖房子或种地谋生。她说，他每天能挣几美元——虽然微薄，但足够养家糊口了。
But after the economy crashed last year, the work dried up. Her family survived the winter on stores of food they had saved. When those ran out this spring, her neighbors and relatives in the village offered what they could to her and her five children. But now, even they do not have any food left to share.
但去年经济崩溃后，工作机会就没有了。她们一家就靠之前存下来的食物熬过了冬天。今年春天，当这些东西吃完后，村里的乡邻和亲戚们尽他们所能给她和她的五个孩子提供帮助。但现在，他们也没有多余的食物可以拿出来周济了。
“I have never in my life experienced such difficulties as we have now,” she said.
“我这辈子从来没有像现在这样困难过，”她说。
Across major cities, informal markets hawking desperate people’s household belongings have taken over entire streets. Makeshift stalls are packed with shiny blue and pink curtains, flimsy wardrobes, TVs, refrigerators and multiple piles of red Afghan rugs.
在各大城市，绝望的人们叫卖各种家用物品，把整条街道变成了非正规的市场。临时的摊位上摆满闪亮的蓝色和粉色窗帘，还有质地单薄的衣柜、电视、冰箱和成堆的红色阿富汗地毯。
Sitting in his stall in Kabul one recent afternoon, one vendor, Mohammad Nasir thumbed a string of red prayer beads in his hand, musing on the city’s seemingly sudden economic decline.
不久前的一个下午，喀布尔的小贩穆罕默德·纳西尔坐在自己的摊位上，摆弄着手里的一串红色念珠，思索着这座城市似乎突然出现的经济衰退。
Earlier that day a mother had come with her two young sons, who were crying for food, to bring Mohammad a rug to sell. But even more heartbreaking was what he saw during his commute home earlier that week, he said.
当天早些时候，一位母亲带着两个饿得直哭的幼子给穆罕默德带来了一块她想卖掉的地毯。但更令人心碎的是他在本周早些时候回家的路上看到的一幕，他说。
“Beside a river, someone was throwing away stale bread, and people were there collecting the stale bread to eat,” he said. “I’m 79 years old and I have never seen such a thing in Kabul.”
“在一条河边，有人在扔掉不新鲜的面包，有人在那里捡不新鲜的面包吃，”他说。“我已经79岁了，在喀布尔我从未见过这样的事情。”
“Even under the previous regime of the Taliban — people were hungry, but I didn’t see that,” he added.
“即使在过去的塔利班政权统治下，人们也吃不饱，但我没见过这样的事情，”他补充道。