By: Ziba Balkhi
A woman seeking a divorce from her husband in Balkh province says the Taliban forces at the public court encouraged her husband to be violent with her.
“You are a woman, we will put you in the prison,” Nasima, 27, says the Taliban forces told her in the public session of the Taliban court in Balkh district. “They said to my husband, Take this woman home and punch her in the mouth. If she continues talking, break her teeth.”
Women initiating divorce through the court system in Balkh is rare and Nasima is one of the first to talk about her experiences since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and the court system in August 2021. She was seeking divorce her husband to end his abuse of her.
Nasima’s case was opened in the time of the Ashraf Ghani government and she had only one more court session to formally separate from her husband, but then the country fell to the Taliban.
Nasima tells Rukhshana Media that since the day the Taliban regained power, she has not received any support except humiliation and insults when she attended court to try to continue the divorce process.
She has miscarried a pregnancy due to physical beatings from her husband.
“Last year during the previous government, due to the violence and beatings I had experienced, the child died in my womb,” she says. “My husband is from Balkh district of Balkh province. He did not let me go to work and beat me up.”
Nasima says that during Ashraf Ghani’s administration, the court approved her separation from her husband and her husband spent three months in prison because of his violence towards her. A week before the Taliban takeover, she understood her divorce case was being transferred to a provincial court. But since then, there has been no news about her case.
“A week after the regime changed, my husband started coming to our alley and humiliating me,” she says. “He would beating me and say, ’I will not let you go until I make you a prisoner’”.
“Finally, I received an arrest warrant from the district. I went with my father. The armed men and the judges were there. They humiliated my father and told him to sell his daughter,” she says.
Since the Taliban took power in 2021, women’s access to judicial institutions has been severely limited. The Taliban dismissed all female prosecutors and institutions defending women’s rights, such as the Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, no longer exist.
Nasima says that during the court proceedings, the Taliban did not even allow her to speak and the Taliban judge ruled that she must live with her husband again, telling her “You are a woman and you must obey your husband.”
She was pressured in the Balkh district court, which is run by the Taliban, to guarantee that she will drop her case against her husband.
Instead Nasima went to the Taliban appeals court but has faced the same situation. This time she enlisted a lawyer, but the situation did not change for her. On the contrary, the Taliban judge has encouraged her husband’s violence against her. “There, they told my husband to take me home and work on me like a donkey,” she says.
Nasima’s case is still on the table of Taliban judicial institutions in Balkh. She refused to return to live with her husband and instead lives in her father’s house.
“I told the court, let me tell you what I have gone through,” she says. But they told her as a woman she was not allowed to talk.
“They said ‘Sit down, shameless woman! You are a woman. Why are you still talking?”
“Finally, I asked the judge ‘What should I do?’ He replied, Stay in uncertainty,” she says.
Two months ago, Nasima was summoned to the city court of the Taliban administration in Mazar-e-Sharif city, the capital of Balkh. Her appeal had been decided. It was in favor of her husband. Again, she was criticised by the judge.
“You have to be imprisoned so that other women learn a lesson,” Nasima says the judge told her.
Since the three courts have all approved her husband’s behaviour, the threats from him have increased.
Defense lawyers in Mazar-e-Sharif have told Rukhshana Media that the Taliban judicial institutions in the province do not give importance to cases brought by women. They say that in many cases, women’s requests for family law are rejected outright by the court.
Najib Azad* a defense lawyer in Balkh Province says that before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the Personal Affairs Division of the Municipal Primary Court of Mazar-e-Sharif was responsible for handling family cases. But after August 15 2021, there are no traces of the court and there is currently no family court for women.
The defense lawyer says that the current system uses the Civil Court, which is responsible for handling cases on monetary transactions, land transactions, land usurpation, land disturbance and such, is also responsible for handling family cases. “If a woman seeks separation from her husband,” he says. “The primary court of Mazar-e-Sharif will not even accept the women’s petition.”
Azad says that he recently had a female client seeking divorce due to her husband’s drug addiction, but his application for her case to the Mazar-e-Sharif City Primary Court was rejected outright. Azad then took the request to the civil court of Mazar-e-Sharif which also rejected the request. Finally, after days of going back and forth and showing a lot of evidence of her husband’s poor behaviour, Azad’s client managed to open a case in the rights management of the Taliban Justice Department in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
However, there has been zero progress on it since then.
“In the first session, the Taliban judge asked her ‘What is your case’?” She replied that she had come to sue her husband. The judge answered her, “You women always complain about your husbands. I swear, if you are ungrateful to your husbands, you do not know God at all.”
Azad says that now the woman’s husband is absent due to his addiction and he does provide any financial support. But the Taliban judge has completely ignored these concerns, saying to his client “Leave, girl. Don’t pursue such things. Don’t waste our time.”
“They kicked her out of the office,” he says.
A female defense lawyer in Mazar, who spoke to Rukhshaneh Media on condition of anonymity, said that the disregard for women’s requests and the threats women receive from the courts are widespread in the Taliban’s judicial institutions. This has severely limited women’s access to justice, and in most cases, Taliban judges decide the case in favor of men without even hearing the women’s arguments.
The system also makes it more complicated for women to have legal representation. If a man becomes a woman’s defense lawyer, he risks being harassed and must explain to the Taliban why he would pursue a woman’s case.
Nisar Karimi*, a defense lawyer in Mazar-e-Sharif, says that often women are forced to give up their cases including marriage separation or any other request.
Karimi says he had a client who was seeking a divorce over her husband’s violent behaviour towards her, which he had been arrested for. On the day of her court case seeking divorce, both the woman and her husband appeared in the court.
“Instead of asking the accused what he did to be arrested, the judge asked the woman what she did to make her husband get arrested,” Karimi says.
When the woman replied that her husband had subjected her to violent beatings and abuse, the Taliban judge became angry and insulted her, calling her demented, and telling her off for using “vulgar” words during the court session.
“The judge said ‘You came because of a beating? Curse the father of the republican government for teaching you “violence”. This is not violence. I slapped my wife more than a hundred times, not once did she ask, Why did you slap me? You are shameless. You women are incorrigible.”
During the session, Karimi was expelled from the court hall for trying to defend his client. The case was decided in favour of the man, who the judge ordered be released from prison, and the woman was ordered to return to live with him. But she refused the result. That angered the judge further.
“When the lady said that I am not satisfied with your decision, he told a Taliban guard to come and put her hands in chains. He said, ‘Put her in prison until she accepts our decision’.” But as Karimi explains, the court system allows for parties in every case to say whether he or she accepts the court’s decision.
“Finally, the lady signed the agreement and promised not to complain about her husband anymore and go live with him. Otherwise, they will lock her up,” Karimi says.
*Names have been chosen as pseudonyms at the request of interviewees.
