By Kobra Nader
On Saturday morning in the Afghan capital, a group of women gathered in front of the Cure Hospital to protest the dire economic situation in silence, but were quickly surrounded by 100 armed Taliban soldiers who prevented them from fully staging their demonstration.
The protestors had planned to sit in front of the foreign-run hospital, wearing black scarves and a white mask with a cross on it, to symbolically show how the Taliban was silencing them.
However, before they had all gathered, around 100 fully-armed Taliban soldiers arrived at the scene, closed part of the road, and encircled the protesters for over two hours.
The Taliban did not allow the journalists to cover the protest and they even prevented protesters themselves from taking pictures or filming them.
Some of the protesters who tried to talk to the Taliban were insulted. A Taliban official told them, “You are animals and we will never talk to animals,” one protester quoted him as saying.
“I have participated in several protests, but I have never seen the Taliban so fearful,” ۲۶-year-old protest organizer Reshmin told Rukhshana Media. “Even though they surrounded us with over 100 soldiers, they were still afraid of us,” she said, adding that the Taliban officials were also at the scene.
“The fear of the Taliban is proof that our protests are effective,” she added.
“We told Taliban officials that we are not talking about the Islamic Emirate. We are here to talk about the situation of unemployed women at home, the situation of hungry children and the situation of girls who are not allowed to go to school, but it seems that they didn’t understand us, instead they cursed us,” Reshmin said.
“At first, the Taliban did not allow us to return to our homes, but after two hours, they let us go home in groups of two,” said a 22-year-old women’s rights activist who asked not to be named.
“I was the last person to leave the area and the Taliban checked my mobile and deleted only the photo that I had taken of the protest,” the activist said.
She also added that the Taliban asked for their home address and threatened to arrest them and if they continued their protest.
“We protested the economic hardship because eight children have starved to death, tomorrow that could be our children,” said a 48-year-old teacher, who lost her job of 20 years when the Taliban swept to power in mid-August.
The teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing Taliban retaliation, said that a Taliban soldier beat her with the butt of his rifle.
“No matter how much the Taliban try to silence us, we will continue to raise our voice,” she said.
While under the Taliban’s siege, the women protesters recited verses from the Qur’an and shouted, “We are strong. We are not afraid of you.”
Zulfaqar Mohammadi, a reporter who covered the protest was stopped by the Taliban, his camera was seized and all the pictures and videos he recorded were deleted by the Taliban, he told Rukhshana Media.
“After I finished covering the protest and I was about to leave, the Taliban soldiers came and took my bag where I put my equipment,” Mohammadi said, “One of them was guarding my bag and six of them were guarding me, so I didn’t run away.”
Meanwhile, another group of women in a different part of Kabul also protested against poverty and economic hardship by distributing clothes to displaced people who were forced to leave their home in other provinces as the Taliban encroached in their cities.
Since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August, the group has effectively banned women from work and secondary schools. Even though the Taliban claim this is a “temporary” measure and it will be lifted once the group creates a framework to allow women to return to school and work, it has not provided a timeline.
Today’s protests against hunger and economic hardships took place at a time when the country is struggling with a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP), describing the situation in Afghanistan as “becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”. On October 25, the WFP warned in a new report that half of Afghanistan’s population, around 23 million are at risk of food insecurity “while 8.7 million face emergency levels of hunger.”
