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Deborah EllisA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Afghanistan is a multiethnic country in Central Asia. The older characters in The Breadwinner, such as Parvana’s parents, recall the beauty of life in Kabul, the capital, before the eras of the Soviets and the Taliban.
The Afghan War (1979-92) began as an internal conflict between Afghanistan’s communist government and anticommunist Islamic guerrillas. However, in late 1979, in support of the communist government, the Soviet Union began its invasion of the country. Given the Cold War context, the US supported Afghanistan’s anticommunist forces, who managed to expel the Soviets from the country after a protracted war that Britannica estimates killed 1.5 million people.
The Soviets’ withdrawal from the country in 1989 created a power vacuum; the official government had little control beyond Kabul, and violence broke out across the country between competing militias vying for control. Due to the ongoing conflict and the land mines that many of the factions used, millions of Afghans became refugees or were killed or maimed. Much of the country’s infrastructure and farmland were destroyed, damaged, or riddled with land mines, leading to malnutrition, disease, and further death. The impact of this destruction is evident in numerous scenes from the novel, including those that show extreme hunger, poverty, and the demand for artificial legs needed by those who lost limbs to land mines or other acts of war.
The Taliban, originally a group of fighters in the Afghan War, emerged as the dominant militia in these battles and seized control of Kabul in 1996. At the time of the events of the story—approximately 1998—the Taliban controlled approximately 2/3 of the country. Almost 100% of Afghans are Muslim, but prior to the Taliban’s regime, women enjoyed the right to vote, attended universities, pursued careers, and were guaranteed equal protection under the constitution. The Taliban, however, combined Islamic fundamentalism with repressive traditional views and enforced very restrictive laws, particularly for women. Girls could not attend school after age eight. Women were no longer allowed to hold jobs or travel unaccompanied by a male relative; this left widows and orphaned girls with no recourse to support themselves. Women were required to wear burqas at all times if they happened to be outside the home, and windows in houses where women lived were ordered to be blacked out so that the women were not visible from the outside, as is represented in the novel. Some women operated secret schools, but at the risk of severe punishment. Women’s access to health care was also severely restricted.
The Taliban were also particularly suspicious of the corrupting influence of ideas and cultural influences from other countries, so they burned many books, smashed televisions, and forbade Western music.
In Fall 2001, the Taliban were driven from power only two months into the Afghanistan War. In this war, the US and its allies backed the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban force, in response to the Taliban’s refusal to extradite Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, the Taliban had various periods of resurgence of power during the extended conflict, and in 2018, the organization began meeting with the US regarding the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
By August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Kabul and most of the country. Despite early conciliatory rhetoric that referred to providing certain rights for women, the regime quickly imposed measures that echo those of its earlier government. A Vanity Fair piece by Peter Van Agtmael published in October 2022, “The Taliban Have Basically Eliminated Women from Public Life,” reports the following restrictions: Women must have male escorts outside their homes; girls are not allowed to go to school after the sixth grade; women must wear the burqa, with all body parts except their eyes covered; and “vice and virtue squads” police the streets.
Van Agtmael states that most women are not allowed to work, but an exception is made for female doctors and surgeons because the hospitals cannot function without them. Most of the women he saw on the streets in Afghanistan in 2022 were beggars, and he notes, “War widows number in the tens of thousands—there is no accurate count.” Given the restrictions against women’s working or existing outside the home without a male chaperone, this echoes the circumstances that required Parvana to dress as a boy to support her family in The Breadwinner. Afghanistan in 2022 is ruled by the same regime and governed by the same restrictions that formed the context of the novel nearly 25 years earlier.
By Deborah Ellis