By Azadah
Zarifa Yaqubi, 29, was arrested and imprisoned for 41 days by the Taliban.
Hakima Mahdawi, 25, spent a night in prison after being detained. Her ordeal was short but no less traumatic.
“One night was like a year for me,” Hakima says.
Here are Zarifa and Hakima’s first-person accounts of their arrests, detention, and treatment. Their experience of abuse, coercion and torture are common among women imprisoned under Afghanistan’s de facto government.
A Taliban crackdown since January 1 on enforcing a strict hijab has seen the group detain dozens of women and girls in Kabul. stoking fears for their safety.
Hakima’s story
Labelled a prostitute
My friend Sahar and I were talking in Tabasom Cultural Cafe in west Kabul’s Pol-e-Khoshk area. We were laughing together, unaware that this laughter will bring chaos.
The gate of the was slammed close with a loud bang and everyone was startled. I saw that three men entered. One of them wearing a white turban and a white Afghan dress and the two others had military uniforms and whips in their hands.
It was early March and International Women’s Day was getting closer, so my friend Sahar* and I were preparing for a protest. Before the Taliban seized power, I had been studying psychology at Kabul University. [After the takeover,] we formed a protest group without any external support with about 50 other socially active girls and women.
That day we were planning the protest at Tabasom Cultural Cafe. It was Thursday, March 5 at 11:30 in the morning when the three men entered.
In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere of the restaurant turned terrifying. The Taliban raised the curtain dividing the men and the women in the restaurant [segregated under Taliban restrictions].
They lined up the women on one side and the men on the other side and told everyone to put their cell phones on the dining tables. I was trying to hide mine. One of the men noticed and ripped it from my hand. He slapped me hard across the face, saying, “Whore, you wanted to hide your moral corruptions? It’s too late for that!”
The Talib with the turban – I think was a Mawlawi – ordered the restaurant staff to turn off the electricity. Approaching the men lined up in the restaurant, he cursed at them, saying they had come here because of immoral work with women that were not mahram [male guardians] to them.
“Don’t you have food in your house that you bring your wives here?” he asked them.
None of those men dared to say anything.
The Mawlawi ordered that all the men should be whipped 20 times. No of the men said a word.
Some women and girls spoke up saying, “What sin did we commit that you do such a thing?”
The Talib answered, “Be quiet, you Hazara whores!”
There were about 20 men there. Each of them was whipped 20 times in turn and then stood aside.
When it was the women’s turn, the Mawlawi forced each of them to speak in front of a recorded video, “We were here for immoral activities and had extramarital affairs with these men, and now we have been arrested.”
When it was my turn, I refused. I had not done anything wrong. “Why should I confess?” I asked.
He separated me from other women. On the order of Mawlawi, one of them took my mother’s number from my mobile phone – and called her.
“We caught your daughter doing immoral work and we are taking her to the police district,” he told her.
When I heard this, my whole body became weak and was speechless. I couldn’t say anything. They didn’t even let my mother say a word. They quickly cut off the call and did not give my mobile back to me.
Then one of these Talib soldiers came and covered my head and face with a covering and told me to walk.
My legs did not have the ability. I somehow didn’t know how to walk, but I had to move. They took me in their Ford Ranger. Two Taliban soldiers sat on both sides of me. They were talking in Pashto and laughing together. When I tried to ask what I had done, they just said, ‘Don’t talk, whore!’
I was taken to Police District 18. At some point, I noticed it was 8pm on my watch. I never understood how so many hours had passed.
They put me in a windowless room that looked like a barn. They called my family and asked for one million afghanis (US$14,100) in exchange for my release. They threatened to kill me if this money wasn’t paid. My mother was crying and begging, “Don’t hurt my daughter. We will arrange the money for sure.”
When my brother took the cell phone, the Mawlawi told him, “You Hazaras, your wives are all whores. All the police districts are full of your whores. Come tomorrow with the one million afghanis and take your prostitute.”
Every Talib I encountered [while detained] would stink from a few meters away. They took turns to torture me with electric prods to try and force me to admit that I was getting money from outside to protest against the Taliban.
I was hit so much that night that I thought my life was over. But they could not get any forced confession from me.
In the morning, my brother brought 800,000 afghanis which he had borrowed from all his relatives. I was forced to sign a commitment [against protesting] written in Pashto. I didn’t understand anything. I was threatened that if I protested again, I would be punished with death.
They threatened me not to talk about my torture with the media. They said if I did, they would release the videos they took of me during the torture.
I wish this was the whole story. When I was released, they took my brother and declared him sentenced him to six months in prison because we had brought 200,000 afghanis less than what was asked.
I felt as if I died. My legs lost their strength. I collapsed on the floor.
Enough, I said. I will never protest. My brother is my mother’s only son.
One of these Taliban said, “Go, get lost! Do not shout so much. Here, no one hears the voice of prostitutes. God shall not bring that day to even our enemies.”
After I got home, I didn’t know how to tell my mother that her only son was imprisoned instead of me. I didn’t want anything to happen to my mother.
Now that I’m far from Afghanistan, I still feel wanted by the Taliban. I have lost all peace of mind. I live far from Afghanistan but still in a purgatory of immigration and destitution.
Zarifa Yaqubi’s story
A prison worse than hell
It was November 3, 2022. My friends and I had organized a conference to announce the Afghan Women’s Movement for Equality. When the conference was ending, I realized that the conference hall was surrounded by Taliban special forces.
They came straight towards me. The female cops cursed and punched me and forced me to get into a police vehicle.
At first, I was imprisoned in solitary confinement at Golbahar Center for 72 hours. After filing a case against me, I was transferred to the Taliban’s 040 intelligence department.
I will never forget those prison cells. I was fed some half-raw rice that smelled bad. Food was placed in front of me from a distance as if they were feeding an animal. Healthy food was not available.
There were no facilities there. To take a bath and go to the toilet, we had to get permission from the head of the department, which took a long time. Because of going to the bathroom, I couldn’t get permission to go to the toilet for days, it was so painful.
They did not allow me to contact my family. They tortured us mentally and physically in different ways and told us to repent because we were disbelievers to them who raised our voices against an Islamic government in front of those who were not our mahrams in the streets.
Prison is a very dangerous place. But the Taliban’s prison was worse than hell. 41 days have passed for 41 years. Once they tortured and beat me so much that I became weak. When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the damp floor of the cell. My whole body was bruised. I felt a severe pain in my back, which now always bothers me. They tortured me to admit that I was taking money from foreigners to protest against the Taliban.
Taliban prison cannot be described in terms of words, because it can’t be anything more than terror, especially for a woman. The prosecutors who handled my case there did not understand Dari or Persian. I did not understand Pashto and it was a big challenge. After spending 41 days, on December 13, with a guarantee of a forced confession and a commitment that I should not talk to any media about my imprisonment and physical and mental torture. They made me promise never to protest the Taliban again.
In the prison, they gave electric shocks and hit parts of my body with cables so that I would not be able to show in front of the camera tomorrow. They used to ask, which country I was spying for, which political movement was supporting me, and who sent us money to demonstrate against the Taliban.
When I was released, I had trouble getting to know the people around me. Losing my memory was the biggest damage I got from the Taliban prison. A problem for which I am still under the serious care of doctors. But I will not forget for a minute what happened and is happening to us women in the Taliban prison.
After my release, I did not have the right to leave the house. After three months, I was told by the Taliban that they were not responsible for my security. When I heard this from the Taliban, I felt more danger. Finally, I left Kabul at three o’clock in the morning and joined hundreds of refugees and displaced persons. Leaving Kabul and Afghanistan is like being away from your mother. When I think about my country and the women there, I can’t stop the tears from flowing from my eyes.
I tell this story for history. We should never forget that the Taliban are the main enemies of the freedom of women and girls in Afghanistan. If the Taliban remain in Afghanistan, women and girls cannot look forward. Institutions that support human rights, especially the rights of women and girls, should not forget the struggles and sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the oppression of the Taliban regime.
My problem and those like me are with the Taliban. Maybe I live in a safe country out of necessity, but I am still mentally tortured because thousands of girls and women live in more pitiful conditions than me and they cannot even raise their voices. At least we were able to raise our voices and protest. The conditions for them have become much stricter.
I don’t think my life will go back to normal unless one day I witness that women can be free and live a peaceful life. I went to a psychologist. I was prescribed medicines. I used it for months, but I was not the person before November 3. I cannot easily forget what happened to me inside the prison.
This is the story of all protesting women who fall into the trap of the Taliban. Everyone is tortured in the same way. We even have cases of rape that took place against protesting women in prison. If you are a critic of the Taliban group, you are blasphemy and liable to death, and if you are a Hazara, torture is also a reward from the Taliban’s point of view.
