By Ellaha Rasa
The text message read “I like you and I want to marry you.” Yasra* received it one night from one of the Taliban forces who had occupied Herat. He had stolen her phone number and address from a file at her government office job. That single message turned her life into a nightmare.
Yasra, 35, prefers not to mention the name of the office where she worked before the Taliban for fear of being identified. She says it was common for the administrative department to record the phone contact, home address and other personal details of employees.
After August 2021 when the Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan, a Taliban member, who began to frequent the office took notice of Yasra as she was visiting the office to sign the employment timesheet.
In the first days of returning to power, the Taliban prohibited female employees – about 30 percent of the civil servant workforce – from attending government offices. But they still had to sign the attendance book in order to receive their salaries.
As Yasra explains, that fateful message came through from an AWCC simcard via WhatsApp. “I looked at the picture of the messenger’s WhatsApp profile. He was a thin young man wearing Kandahari clothes, long hair and holding a Kalashnikov weapon,” she says.
Then the man, using her home address, sent his family to formally propose. Their arrival shocked Yasra’s family. “My mother told the family that I was engaged. But they knew that I was not and told my mother that a better match than a Talib would not be found for your daughter and by accepting the match, your daughter’s life in this world and the hereafter will be good.”
Yasra’s family completely disagreed but didn’t want to risk saying no. Instead, they secretly moved away from their home and have been living in secret since.
The man did not relent. For several days in February he sent Yasra Whatsapp messages that went unanswered. “Talk to me, I am looking for marriage, I am single,” one of the messages reads in Pashto, seen by Rukhshana Media.
Yasra cries when she talks about this. She still fears he will find her and will somehow have his way. Yasra does not want to reveal the Talib’s identity or contact details for fear that it may even risk her life or that of her family to do so.
There are several reports of women and girls being forced into forced marriage by Taliban members who do not respect a refusal. Diplomat Magazine reported a story in October 2021 of a woman who married a Taliban fighter after the fall of Herat city. “He threatened to rape me and kill my children if I would not marry him,” the woman told the magazine. “He persisted and I had no choice in the matter. He forced me to marry in September with a mullah’s consent.” She goes on to say that her life is a nightmare. “It is like he is raping me every night,”
The Taliban reject this claim. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Taliban, has previously said that such actions violate the laws of Islam.
Yasra was a master’s student in economics at Herat University, who was forced to cease her studies after the Taliban banned education for girls above grade six. She says she has no way to fully escape the prospect of a forced marriage if the Talib discovers her again, other than emigrating out of Afghanistan. So she decided to leave the country she loves behind.
Lucky for Yasra, her plan worked and the asylum application has been accepted in a European country. But the struggle is not quite over. “Day and night I think about how I can get out of this country, we applied for a visa to Iran, and after getting the visa, I will leave Afghanistan as soon as possible,” she says. “I want to escape from the hands of the Taliban and not give in to a forced marriage.”
Shirin Gul*, 45, has also been pressured to accept marriage with a Talib fighter. She says that she lost her husband 2.5 years ago in the war with the Taliban in Herat’s Shindand district. She now lives with her 13-year-old daughter, who is blind, and her 9-year-old son in Herat’s Injil district. Shirin Gul’s only source of meagre income is tailoring.
In January, Shirin Gul had turned to the Taliban for help as she wasn’t earning enough for her family’s needs. In doing so, she shared personal details of her situation and her phone number. The Taliban official who took her contact details under the pretext of coordinating aid distribution followed up by proposing marriage. “He called me at night and said he wanted to marry me,” she says. “He said that he has a three-storey house in Herat and he wants me as his second wife.” She said no, but it meant she also didn’t get any aid.
Others have the marriage decided for them by their family.
Abdul Zaher*, 50, quickly married off his 14-year-old daughter in the early days of the city’s fall to the group. He is one of the former employees of a government office in Herat and he feared for his family’s lives. “You cannot understand the fear of a father. I worked in the government for many years and was involved in handling Taliban cases, and now these people are free and have weapons,” he says. “It was possible that the Taliban would forcibly marry my only daughter [to one of their fighters] under the pretext of taking revenge.”
For Nasima*, 13, her mother married her off to a man 14 years older exactly 15 days after the Taliban took control. Nasima’s mother also feared a Talib would demand a marriage.
Nasima’s three older sisters had all been subjected to quick marriages for fear of the Taliban during the first period of Taliban rule in the 1990s. And now, it’s happening to the youngest of the family of 10.
Nasima’s mother is upset that she has given her youngest away, but she thinks it’s the only way to survive the ruthless Taliban. In a voice note recorded via phone, she tells Rukhshana Media, “I had dreams for Nasima to study, unlike my other daughters, and to see her succeed,” she says. “But since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, I was forced to marry my daughter out of fear that a member of the Taliban would propose to her.”
Recently, Herat’s Taliban Ministry of Interior distributed forms to register the personal information of all family members to be recorded. It is a common request among governments and councils around the world to keep a record of citizens. But in Afghanistan, the request has caused concern.
In the last two months, the forms have been distributed to the people by the county councilors of all Herat city. But some do not trust the Taliban with the information.
Abdul Khaliq*, 45, is the father of three daughters. He has refused to hand over the details. “I will never fill out this form because the Taliban members just want to collect information on my daughters by collecting this form,” he says.
He believes the forms increase the risk that his daughters will be sought out by Taliban forces for marriage.
Photo: Rukhshana Media. Forms to register the personal information of all family members to be recorded
Shafiqa, 45, has engaged her two daughters in the last six months. She says the only reason she made this happen was because the situation in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse and she fears marriage requests from the Taliban. “I have been thinking day and night what would I do if the Taliban came to propose to my daughters,” she said. “That’s why I got my daughters.”
One of Shafiqa’s daughters, 16-year old Nazanin, was a 10th grade student in a Herati private school. She had planned to study engineering at Herat University once she finished school. After the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education and out of fear of an unwelcome Talib suitor, Nazanin feels she had no other choice but accept her mother’s plan – and the suitor’s hand in marriage. “When I saw that there was nothing I could do and my mother was worried about my future, I agreed to marry a relative’s son. I have been engaged for six months,” she says. “I am still not satisfied with this engagement, but I had no choice but to accept it.”
Bibi Gul, 53, a resident of Herat city, found a fiancé for her 22-year-old daughter in a hurried engagement to an illiterate relative two months ago. Her daughter was a second-year student in Herat University’s Faculty of Science. “One of the leaders of the Taliban lives in our area, and there are always military vehicles and armed forces at the gate of his house,” she says. “This situation worried me that members of the Taliban would propose to my daughter.”
Maryam Maruf Arvin, a women’s rights activist and head of the Purple Saturdays movement, says that the number of forced and underage marriages has increased sharply out of fear of being forced to marry a Talib. But these cases are not reported in the media due to the Taliban being in control, restricting media coverage, and fear of the people in talking openly about these matters.
Ms. Arwin says members of the Taliban systematically prevent such events being discussed. “If we compare the violence of the Taliban of the 1990s and the Taliban of the 2020s, in many cases what the Taliban might not have dealt with systematically 20 years ago, they are dealing with systematically today. This makes sure that their crimes are not being documented,” she says. “In many cases, we cannot show and prove their crimes to the international community or even to the people of Afghanistan.”
Since the takeover of the Taliban on August 15, 2021, systems and institutions of protection for victims of violence in Afghanistan have been destroyed. Ms. Arwin describes the situation of women as horrific. “To document the violence of the Taliban, the victims often request to first be transferred to another region [to be safe from retribution],” she says. “But we don’t have the facilities to transport them.”
*Note: In this report, the names of some interviewees have been chosen as pseudonyms.
