These are the stories of three women who have all been detained by Taliban forces and subjected to torture. It has taken them time to be able to share their stories.
They are now safe – physically – from the reach of the Taliban. But they continue to be traumatised and haunted by the experience.
Found in a safe house with almost 30 women and children
Tamanna Rezayi was one of 29 women and children detained during a Taliban raid on a Kabul safe house in March 2022.
That night, they were taken to the Taliban-controlled Ministry of Interior in Kabul.
Tamanna says she feared she would be killed. But instead, she faced psychological pain like she never imagined.
She says the mental anguish happened quickly.
“Because I was a Hazara, they used to torture me a lot,” she says. “(The Taliban guards) would speak directly to me saying, ‘Hazaras are infidels’. That for them, even shaking hands, chatting, or giving their daughters to a Hazara is forbidden.
“They said we should change our religion and convert to Islam.”
Many Hazaras are Shi’ites, the second-largest branch of Islam. The Taliban follow Sunni traditions of Islam.
Tamanna says Taliban forces interrogated her the day after her arrest. Her first interrogator was a man who hit her to the point of concussion.
“He slapped me so hard that everything around me went dark,” Tamanna says.
“He called me a whore.”
The women were often questioned late at night or in the early hours of the morning when it was dark and they would usually be sleeping.
Forced confessions
They were pressured to make false confessions, such as that they were paid by foreign groups to protest for women’s rights.
“They always came for interrogations in the dark – the darkness of midnight or the darkness of early morning.
“They would tell us ‘You should fast, you should repent.’ Up to 12 armed forces would come and try to get you to say you got money from abroad. As much as we denied it, they would say again, ‘You should admit these things’.”
During her 21 days in Taliban custody, Tamanna says the Taliban cut off water and refused them bread.
“They even cut off the water in the toilets for a few nights,” she says. “Then they brought a foreign prisoner and released water for us again.”
After the arrest of the group, the Taliban Ministry of Interior released a 14-minute video in which the women “admitted” they were supported by foreigners to protest against the Taliban.
Tamanna tells Rukhshana Media that was a forced confession.
She says she was threatened that she’d be transferred to another prison with much worse conditions if she did not cooperate.
A frightening female interrogator
“I was the last person to sit in front of the camera. When I didn’t say what they dictated to me three times, one of them hit me on the shoulder with the butt of a gun. A lady named Zarghuna was sitting in front of me telling me what to say. She said, ‘If you don’t say what we want, you will sit here until morning.’”
‘Zarghuna’ was part of the Taliban interrogations from the time the group entered detention until the forced confessions, Tamanna says. She describes her as fierce women who was also armed, but in a style and outfit that baffled Tamanna.
“She had very long nails, nail polish, fake eyelashes, a lot of make-up, black pants with a t-shirt, and talking in Pashto,” she says.
It’s a description that contradicts the strict dress code and hijabs enforced by Taliban soldiers on women throughout Afghanistan.
Tamanna says the Taliban also forced them to give up their phones, allowing them to access them for more information. She says they went through her personal photos and used them in their interrogations.
“We’d done a demonstration where we’d dressed as men. Because of that, they harassed me so much to name the other protesters in the photo. They directly told me ‘It’s obvious from their eyes that all of them are [Hazaras] from your impure tribe,” she says.
She says the Taliban found out where her sisters lived and threatened her with their arrest.
“That’s where I got really scared. I fell to the ground almost on their hands and feet. I begged them not to, that they [the sisters] are not guilty,” Tamanna says.
“I can’t hold back my tears now that I’m telling the story.”
Unknown numbers of girls and women detained
There is no clear record of how many women have been detained or how many are still imprisoned since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
A number of high-profile protesting women are still detained without charge, including Julia Parsi, Manizha Siddiqi and Neda Parwani. There is no information about their fate.
While in prison, Tamanna says the mental distress was such that she tried to commit suicide.
These days she visits a psychologist twice a week to help treat the severe trauma she still carries. She forgets things easily, has constant nightmares when she sleeps, and is afraid of hearing loud noises. Among other treatments, she takes anti-depressant medication.
“I just realized that for all the tough times we’ve been through, our misfortunes have just started. [The detention] took away our peace. The worst part is that I can’t sleep at night. I am afraid to hear a man’s voice. I am afraid that someone will talk in Pashto,” Tamanna says.
Immediately after her release, Tamanna was hospitalized after fainting because someone turned the doorknob of her room when she didn’t expect it. She says she was afraid it was a Talib.
“I have nightmares most nights,” she says. “I wake up and I’m afraid I’m still in the Talib’s grip until I’m fully awake.”
Trauma is a common problem for many women who emerge from Taliban detention.
Found and detained while in hospital
Parwana Ebrahimkhel Nejarabi was detained by Taliban forces after protesting for women’s rights. She was tracked down and arrested while recovering in hospital.
She says that from the moment of her arrest, the Taliban beat her, slapped her on the face, and gave her electric shocks. She says the group also subjected her to mental abuse, cursing and taunting her.
“I could hear them saying, ‘She should be killed’,” Parwana says.
“There wasn’t any women among them. Their heads and faces were full of hair that looked like strange and scary creatures in the dark,” she says.
She says the men interrogating her showed her a letter with an order for her to be stoned. She still does not know if the letter was real or only meant to inflict terror.
Parwana spent just under a month in solitary confinement. She says that a short time before her release from prison, Taliban forces entered the room she was being held and assaulted her mercilessly, kicking and punching her, and hitting her head against the wall.
Persistent pain
The ordeal has left her body in chronic pain.
“They slandered me saying that I had converted to Christianity, and that they had to beat me on my head, face, and body until I became a Muslim,” she says.
“The Taliban would enter my cell at any moment. They used to curse me. They used to call me a whore. If they saw my face, they would slap me, saying why are you not covering your face? I’d had an operation on my face, and I could not cover it. But with the slapping, the operated part of my face has been very damaged.”
She says they also beat her sister’s husband, asking why he allowed Parwana to protest against the Taliban. She says this was a form of mental torture for her.
Eventually, Parwana also made a false confession and was released.
She still has nightmares at night and many times wakes up crying, she says.
“It’s a nightmare that will never end in my life,” she says.
Dreams of returning home
Parwana fled Afghanistan and lives abroad now. She is under the supervision of a psychologist and is on medications to manage her symptoms.
“The trauma of being in solitary confinement is still in my head. I can’t sleep properly. If I hear a little noise, I get up and I’m constantly afraid that someone is going to hit me,” she says.
But Parwana wants to be strong to return to Kabul one day.
“My soul will heal only in the streets of Kabul and when the Taliban are gone,” Parwana says.
Tracked to her place of work and arrested
Zahra Mohammadi is a doctor who was arrested from her workplace by Taliban intelligence on February 3, 2022 after protesting for women’s rights.
She was detained for 10 days in the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence.
“In the Taliban intelligence office, there was no limit to torture,” she says.
“If we’d been killed, no one would ask about it or follow up,” she says.
Zahra says she broke three bones as a result of the punches and kicks inflicted by the Taliban on her. She has developed a lumbar disc problem, a weak right hand, and other ongoing physical pain.
The long road to heal the mental wounds
But she says the mental torture of the isolation and fear was the worst aspect.
These days, she struggles with insomnia, forgetfulness, and psychosis. She takes pills to sleep but tries to use them sparingly as she’s aware of the risk of an addiction.
“I will never forget the night when my ribs were broken,” she says. “I couldn’t breathe that night.”
Zahra says no one in Taliban intelligence takes responsibility for these actions.
She says empty dishes would be delivered to her cell. She would be given fruit juice in used plastic water bottles, but she never touched it. At one point, due to her severe injuries and her weakened physical state, she says the Taliban brought her some sort of tablet with fruit juice.
She had written the names of her mother and husband on the prison wall to get her through.
Zahra breaks into uncontrollable tears as she remembers her time in detention.
Zahra has also fled Afghanistan, but she continues her struggle against the Taliban, despite feeling like she ahs already reached her limit.
“I have lost my beauty today. I lost the beauty of my skin. There are wrinkles on my forehead and under my eyes. My hair has whitened, and my bones ache. It’s all damage that the Taliban has brought to me,” she says.
