The United States on Saturday urged Afghanistan ( news - web sites )'s future government to include both genders, saying the Taliban's repression of women had crippled the country like cutting the wing off a bird.
It peppered a State Department report called "The Taliban's War Against Women" with quotes from members of the collapsing hard-line Islamic movement and from ordinary people, revealing horrors Afghan women have endured since 1996.
"The Afghan people want, and the U.S. government supports, a broad-based representative government, which includes women, in post-Taliban Afghanistan," the report said.
"We believe any future Afghan government should be multi-ethnic, representative, and respect human rights, including those affecting women and girls," it quoted Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky as saying.
Taliban members raped, abducted and forced women to marry, the report said, adding that families sent daughters to Pakistan or Iran for protection.
An estimated 50,000 widows of war were forced to beg, or worse, by Taliban laws against women working, the report said.
"Afghan society is like a bird with two wings. If one wing is cut off, then society will not function," it quoted an Afghan elder as telling a refugee activist.
The old regime's education minister had a different view. "It's like having a flower, or a rose. You water it and keep it at home for yourself, to look at it and smell it. It (a woman) is not supposed to be taken out of the house to be smelled."
In a striking example of the impact of Taliban rule, the report recounted how a young mother left her home without a male escort because her baby was sick.
Seeing her alone, a teenage guard shot her and her baby who were only saved because witnesses intervened.
"The Taliban has clamped down on knowledge, and ignorance is ruling instead," said Sadriqa, a 22-year-old woman in Kabul.
"The life of Afghan women is so bad. We are locked at home and cannot see the sun," said Najeeba, a 35-year-old widow.
Women suffered burns to the throat from swallowing battery acid in attempts to kill themselves, things were so awful under Taliban's rule, the report said.
Life had been different before. "There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy," it said.
Pre-Taliban, 70 percent of schoolteachers, half of government workers and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women, the report said.
It quoted Nasima, 35, as describing Taliban rules like this: "They won't let us go to school because they want us to be illiterate like them."