Warning: This article discusses suicide. If this story raises any concerns for you, please reach out to a local mental health provider or online to mental health support service https://ipso-care.com/ which also offers services in Pashto and Farsi.
By Rukhshana Media’s reporters
Tahira was a positive and motivated journalism student when the Taliban abruptly banned her from continuing her university studies in 2022.
The 24-year-old was no stranger to adversity. She’d fought hard to overcome the challenges of completing school in a remote village in Daikundi province to meet the requirements of the highly competitive journalism course at Kabul University, and faced gender and ethnic discrimination in the country’s capital.
“Tahira was a diligent and resilient student,” one of her classmates said.
The Taliban’s early incursions on women’s rights when the group seized power in 2021 did not rattle Tahira’s focus to pursue her dreams, her older sister Behishta said.
“Tahira endured the first two years of the Taliban’s ban on education with the hope that it would not last. However, contrary to her hopes, the Taliban remained steadfast in their decision,” Behishta said.
Tahira- Image :supplied
Tahira worked on finding a way to leave the country and had ramped up her efforts to learn English with that goal in mind.
“Her main goal was to secure scholarships – her only option for continuing her education. In the first year, she searched with a lot of hope. With the money she earned from teaching at a private school, she attended English language courses to meet the scholarship requirements,” Behishta said.
But in the second year, Tahira lost her teaching job. So she turned to sewing to replace the lost income, but it wasn’t enough.
Behishta said Tahira had to quit the language classes as her income dwindled, and slowly she also abandoned her pursuit of scholarships.
On April 13 this year, Tahira took her own life.
A grief without end for Tahira’s family
Behishta still finds Tahira’s death hard to accept.
“She had become very despondent and quiet, but she was a strong girl who had overcome a difficult path to get her education,” Behishta said.
Tahira’s family whom she lived with in Kabul tried to save her life once it became clear that she had swallowed poison. Her brother-in-law rushed her to Muhammad Ali Jinnah Hospital in western Kabul at 2.00pm.
Only half an hour earlier, Tahira had called her mother and Behishta in Daikundi to speak with them. She’d asked her mother what she needed to from Kabul and informed her sister Behishta that she had left her keys in a somewhere.
A doctor at the hospital called Behishta’s husband and informed him that Tahira’s chances of surviving looked slim.
By 8.00pm, Tahira’s eyes had closed forever.
Sitara was desperate to end crushing restrictions
With deepening restrictions on girls and women in Afghanistan being imposed by the Taliban, reports are increasing of rising despair and mental health issues.
Numerous cases of female suicide and suicide attempts have been reported and many others talked about but never confirmed. Taliban authorities have at times denied or prevented coverage of these tragic cases, including prohibiting families from speaking to the media.
It has been almost two years since 17-year-old Sitara* tried to end her life by shooting herself.
The Bamyan province teenager described feeling like she was living “a miserable life under the shadow of the Taliban”.
In September 2022, after eating breakfast, the teen went to her father’s wardrobe where she knew he had a pistol.
Doctors said the bullet passed through her chest and just missed her spine, but causing serious damage to her nerve vessels, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.
“Two nights before the incident, my father had come home and left his pistol among his clothes,” she said.
Sitara’s mother Soraya* was in the barn milking her sheep when she heard a gunshot.
The 47-year-old rushed home and found her daughter lying unconscious on the floor, with her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling.
“Seeing Sitara in that state, I screamed and called for help,” Soraya said.
“Until we reached the clinic, I thought she was dead. When she regained consciousness, she was incessantly screaming and moaning. The doctors at the clinic instructed us to take her to the Bamyan central hospital.”
The drive to the hospital took five hours from their home in Panjab district.
“On the way, Sitara kept screaming and pleading with me to end her pain and suffering,” Soraya said.
Sitara’s father has joined the Taliban forces after facing unemployment to support his family of eight. He earns a monthly salary of 10,000 afghanis (US$142).
But for Sitara, the Taliban represent nothing good.
“Life under the Taliban is nothing but darkness,” Sitara said.
“Every day, I walked the long distance between home and school. I wanted to join the military after graduation and had set a goal to wear my country’s army uniform one day. But suddenly, everything collapsed.
“The person I was and the person I was supposed to be have been destroyed under the ominous shadow of the Taliban. The Taliban took away all my hope. Today, I can’t even go to the bathroom alone.”
Karima attempted to escape threatening situation
For Karima*, her recent attempt was driven more by terrible fear of a forced marriage by a man who seemed to have the favour of the Taliban.
Her mother Maryam recounted the story.
“It has been two months since a man named Hashim, from district ten in Badakhshan province, who is probably around 40 or 41 years old, proposed to marry Karima,” Maryam said.
“He proposed three times, but neither Karima nor we were willing to accept. Despite this, he was determined to marry Karima by any means possible.”
Maryam said that the Hashim came to their home twice with armed men and one time he threatened Karima’s father, who is a day laborer, to pressure him to agree to the marriage.
Maryam said that 20-year-old Karima overheard her father discussing these threats at home, and the next day, she swallowed rat poison.
Karima’s mother said that Hashim is already a husband and father of a family and they had had no prior dealings with him.
It is unclear whether he is officially a Taliban member, but Karima’s family said he has the support of the local Taliban and is using force to marry their daughter.
Karima said she was suffering from deep pain when she tried to end her life.
“I was extremely frustrated. It has been several months that we are going through great difficulties,” Karima said.
“Since that 40-year-old man wants to make me his wife, I felt like I’m a burden to myself and my family. That’s why I wanted to end my life so that I won’t be a problem for anyone.”
The Taliban de facto authorities in Afghanistan recently announced a new level of restrictions of girls and women under what it called the Law of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
It requires women to cover their entire body and conceal their faces in public, and bans a woman’s voice from being heard in public as an intimate level of exposure. The reasoning behind the rules is to prevent temptation among men.
