By: Zabi Balkhi
Her body is still covered in bruises and wounds. Her thighs especially bear marks of a brutal beating by the Taliban. And the men who did it were her own sons.
‘Nahida*”, as she wishes to be called in this article, is 47. She lives in Takhar province in northern Afghanistan.
She says her two sons, aged 22 and 24, were driven by poverty and unemployment to join the Taliban after it returned to power on August 15, 2021. But they soon embraced the group’s ideas and brutality, regularly beating not just their mother but their sisters.
“From the day they joined the Taliban, they became like them,” she says. “They became restrictive and because of being a girl and a woman, they even torture and beat me and their sisters.”
Rukhshana Media has seen photos of Nahida and her daughters’ scars and bruises. To protect their safety, we are not publishing them or writing their real names.
Nahida sheds tears when she tells the story of her dark life.
For 12 years, Nahida has been taking care of her 11 children alone. She says her husband worked in the Afghan national army in Takhar province; But he was killed by the Taliban.
“On the day of his martyrdom, I had just made morning tea and we were having breakfast, when my husband received a call from his office that, ‘There was going to be a suicide attack in one of Takhar’s mosques. Go and arrest the suicide bomber’, In the morning, my husband went to the mosque without having breakfast, and it was there that the Taliban shot him in the head. My husband and two of his colleagues were martyred.”
Nahida says the dark times began after his death. She could barely cope with the responsibility of raising her children on her own.
Until recently, Nahida was a teacher in one of Takhar’s schools. “I had a monthly salary of 7,000 Afghanis (USD 80 dollars),” she says. “It was not enough for a family of 12. But six months ago, I was fired.”
Nahida now tries to scratch a living working in a sewing workshop in Takhar. But hunger is not the only pain she and her daughters face. She says “the Taliban ideology” her sons brought into the four walls of their house has made their lives even more bitter.
Only Nahida is allowed to go outside. Her daughters can’t leave home or even use the phone. “Before the Taliban government, my eldest daughter was working in a tailoring shop,” she says. “They stopped her going. They used to say, “You don’t have the right to go out anymore’ and every day they make excuses and beat us.”
Since returning to power, the Taliban have imposed countless restrictions on women. The right to work, education, travel, and clothing has been taken away and has been replaced by gender discrimination, reinforcement of patriarchal beliefs and fear and isolation.
“They always say to wear long clothes,” says Nahida. “Wear caps at home day and night. Do not go out of the house.’ They have changed like that. We endured the suffering and torture of hunger and thirst before, but not this torture. They even beat me with a whip until they don’t have the energy to hit me more.”
Nahida says that her eldest daughter graduated from high school. But her brothers beat her when they learned she wanted to enroll in midwifery at a private university. “They tied my daughter’s hands and feet and beat her with a machete until my daughter’s arm was broken.”
Then they threatened to kill her if she enrolled.
“My daughter is sick. She cries every day because her hand hurts but they don’t let me even take her to the hospital.”
When Nahida tells me these words over the phone, I can hear her sobbing. She says her sons have beaten her every time she’s tried to support her daughters. “Just 15 days ago, they beat me with a whip and the scars and bruises and wounds are still on my hands and feet.”
Two days ago, one of Nahida’s sons saw her 12-year-old daughter using the phone and beat her with the phone’s USB cable. “She was hit with the charger’s plug and her head started bleeding. He brutally beat her and said that the girl should not hold the phone in her hand because it’s rude.”
While Nahida wants her children to study and graduate from university, her sons barely allow her youngest daughter to go to grade six lessons in school.
The Taliban are accused of brainwashing teenagers and young adults, including for suicide attacks. Since returning to power they have built dozens of religious schools to indoctrinate boys and teenagers.
Nahida says her sons never behaved like this before they joined the Taliban.
It wasn’t an easy decision for Nahida to tell this story. She feared being recognized and is torn by the 12 hard years she spent raising her children alone. She says it’s like a “gradual death”.
“A mother who becomes both a father and a mother for 12 years and provides bread for her children, experiences pain, brings bread and food, passes sleepless nights so that her children grow up, should not be humiliated. What book and law tell children to beat their mother when they grow up? Is this the Islam that the Taliban are talking about?”
*Note: In this report, pseudonyms have been chosen to protect the security of the interviewees.
