Since they returned to power last August, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictive regulations on women, making Afghanistan the most misogynistic country in the world.
Women have lost almost every basic right in just less than a year. Millions of girls are out of school. Thousands and tens of thousands of women have lost their jobs. They can’t even travel without a male escort. All women are required to cover their entire body and face, in what appears to be one of the most, if not the most, restrictive hijab codes in the Muslim world.
Though these restrictions have impacted all women across the country, their impacts on female university students have been crippling. Their present, as female education-seekers, and their future, as women who want to play a role in society as part of its workforce, are uncertain in the fog of ambiguity.
Rukhshana Media interviewed 16 female university students, asking them how their lives have been changed since Taliban’s rule began. We report a three-series story based on what they told us.
In the first piece, we report on how female students who live in the hostel in Kabul can’t travel to the provinces to see their families due to the travel ban on women. The second story is about the mistreatment female students face in the hostel. In the third and last report, we write about the female students who are temporarily dropping out of school as they are pondering what to do next.
‘I felt sorry for myself and for my gender’: Female university students who live in Kabul hostels can’t travel alone to visit their families (1)
It has been six months that Maryam Haqjo has not been able to visit her family. She studies midwifery at a university in Kabul, hundreds of miles from Daikundi where her family lives.
One simple question may pop up in everyone’s mind is why she can’t travel? The answer is because she is a woman, living in a country where women aren’t allowed to travel alone anymore.
“I used to visit my family once every two months before the fall of Kabul,” she said. “I traveled alone, and it wasn’t a problem.”
“But now this is the Taliban’s time, and I can’t travel without a Mahram,” 23-year-old Haqjo added.
Haqjo is single, meaning her Mahrams are her father and male siblings who can’t travel to Kabul to escort her back to their home province because they are farmers and summer is a working season for them.
Haqjo said she planned several times to go to Daikundi, but each time the drivers refused to give her a ride after they knew she was alone. The last time she tried was three weeks ago.
“Drivers told me they were sorry they couldn’t drive me because they couldn’t guarantee my safety if I faced any problem along the way,” she said. “I returned to my room, disappointed.”
It isn’t only Haqjo. Female university students from the provinces, who study in Kabul, complained about not being able to travel alone to visit their families. They said the Taliban check their ID cards, and ask them about their male escorts at the checkpoints along the highway.
The Taliban imposed travel restrictions on women in December based on which they aren’t allowed to make journeys of more than 45 miles without a male family member accompanying them. There is no exception. Women have to obey the travel restriction even at emergency times.
Haqjo’s roommate, Roqia Sadat, who is a student of Computer Science school at Kabul University, said she couldn’t attend her grandmother’s funeral and memorial service due to the travel ban. She said she was denied the right to see her grandmother for one last time to say goodbye to her.
“We cannot drive women without a Mahram because the Taliban aren’t allowing us to do so,” she recalled a driver telling her when she went to a local transportation station to hire a driver to drive her to Ghor, where her family lives, so she could attend her grandmother’s funeral.
Four months ago when Sadat traveled to Kabul from Ghor, she said the Taliban were asking women about their male escorts.
“We were all scared,” she added.
The Taliban banned female education and traveling alone in the 1990s when they first ruled over most of Afghanistan.
Many hoped they would rule differently when they seized power last August. But the Taliban have imposed restrictions on women, almost as draconian and as harsh as in the 1990s, despite mounting national and international pressures, dashing all hopes.
For many young female students, the Taliban’s restrictive orders have become like a double-edged sword. Now, it isn’t only the Taliban who are largely against female education and work. Many families are also trying to prevent their daughters from going to school and university due to an uncertain future for women in Afghanistan.
A 22-year-old female student, whose family lives in Balkh, said her father and brothers told her to stop continuing her studies. But she insisted on finishing her fourth year and graduating. She spoke on the condition we don’t use her name.
She said a male relative agreed to escort her to Kabul without her father’s consent.
“Because I came to Kabul without his consent, I no longer have the support of my father as I used to have,” she said, “And this is really painful.”
Around 1,000 female students live in Kabul University hostel, almost all of them have been affected by the Taliban’s travel restrictions.
Drivers also said they don’t dare to drive women without male escorts between the provinces. Nabi, a Kabul-Bamyan driver, said he personally saw the Taliban “beating a driver with a rifle butt” because she had a woman without a male companion in his car.
Afghanistan has become one of the worst places for women, many of whom have been marginalized from society. Some women wish they were not born women.
“I felt sorry for myself and for my gender,” said Haqjo, the female midwifery student about the time when she wasn’t allowed to travel by herself, “I even don’t have the right to see my family.”
