No, Afghanistan did not improve much with U.S. intervention

Afghans also remained resistant to the idea of gender equality. The survey asked many questions about women’s rights, and the answers to most — such as access to education — were suitably positive from a Western point of view. But one question shows how tenuous, and perhaps artificial, those positive answers were. Respondents were given six options for what a woman should wear in public. The No. 1 answer, chosen by 32 percent of Afghans, was the burqa. Twenty-eight percent chose the only slightly less oppressive niqab, which differs from the burqa only in allowing a slit for a woman’s eyes to be visible.