White House adviser says his ‘heart goes out to Afghan women and girls’

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said that the United States will fight to uphold the rights of women in Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country, but offered few details on what tools the Biden administration can use to do so.

“Truly, deeply, my heart goes out to Afghan women and girls in the country today, under the Taliban. We’ve seen what they’ve done before and that’s a very hard thing for any of us to face,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

Sullivan said that President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan wasn’t a choice “just between saving those women and girls and not saving those women and girls” and said the alternative would have involved increasing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, which would have resulted in American casualties.

“These are the choices a president has to make, and it doesn’t mean because we don’t have forces in that country that we are not going to fight on behalf of women and girls and human rights and human dignity. We are. We do, in many other countries where we don’t have active military participation and we’ll do it in Afghanistan, too,” Sullivan continued.

“We will attempt to use every measure of tool and influence we have along with our international allies and partners to alleviate the burden that those women and girls will face in the days ahead,” he said. “We are absolutely, resolutely committed to that.”

Asked later about the tools the administration can use to protect women, Sullivan said the U.S. could implement sanctions or marshal international condemnation of the Taliban. However, he declined to preview the full set of options the U.S. has to draw from.

“I want to be able to have our team communicate directly to the Taliban both what the costs and disincentives are for certain types of action and what our expectations are,” Sullivan said, adding that other nations would have similar conversations as well.

The Taliban swept through cities in Afghanistan over the last several days, taking control of Kabul on Sunday as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

The swift rise of the Islamic fundamentalist group has raised grave concerns about threats to the rights and safety of women and girls in Afghanistan. When the Taliban last controlled Afghanistan, the group prevented girls from receiving an education, working or from leaving their homes without a male family member to accompany them. The Taliban also held public executions.

On Tuesday, a Taliban spokesman said that the rights of Afghan women would be respected “within the framework of Islamic law.”

Sullivan said Tuesday that this statement could not be taken at face value, adding that officials would need to monitor the Taliban’s actions in the coming weeks. 

“This is not about trust, this is about verify, and we’ll see what the Taliban end up doing in the days and weeks ahead. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the entire international community,” Sullivan said.