By Ellaha Rasa, Ziba Balkhi, and Somaya Mandgar
In two years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women’s freedoms have been systematically removed, excluding them from almost all sectors of society. This is the story of five Afghan women who have resisted these restrictions in whatever way they can. From secret disruption to public demonstrations across different provinces, this is how women are taking a stand.
Standing firm under the Taliban whip
Nazanin* has been beaten several times in the streets of Kabul by Taliban forces for participating in protests, but she is undeterred.
When the Taliban barred women from attending universities across the country in December last year, 23-year-old Nazanin was at the gate of Kabul University with a group of female students.
“I waited at the entrance gate of the university for twenty minutes as the number of female students increased to enter the university,” she says. “A Talib attacked us with a whip in his hand, the crowd dispersed, and everyone ran in different directions.”
The whip hit Nazanin’s face, rupturing the blood vessels under her skin. The bruising was so severe, she had to have surgery in hospital. The wound required 13 stitches, confirmed by a photo seen by Rukhshana Media.
Nazanin says that she has also been insulted and humiliated many times over disapproval by Talibs of her clothing and lack of face covering. Twice she’s been struck by the Taliban’s morality police in Dehburi and Kote Sangi areas of Kabul.
In Kote Sangi, the Vice and Virtue officers stopped her and three of her friends to warn them their clothing was deemed inappropriate and that their hair could be seen. When the girls spoke up to explain themselves, they were physically assaulted by the officers who whipped them and hit their backs.
Despite the risk of being whipped or
abused again, Nazanin continues to wear clothes as she sees fit when she leaves the house. She believes that surrendering to the forced hijab and extreme restrictions of the Taliban is more bitter pill to swallow.
A Taliban deception
The day the Taliban returned to Bamyan, Sahar Rastagar* was a teacher in a private school. But with the Taliban takeover and immediate stop to girls’ education above the sixth grade, Sahar lost her job.
Her initial reaction to the Taliban restrictions was to attend a demonstration in Kabul on December 28, 2021. She secretly left her family home, travelling from Bamyan to Kabul alone. The Taliban had not yet imposed restrictions on women traveling without a chaperone.
Although Sahar later faced criticism by her family for participating, she felt protesting was vital to stand up to the Taliban.
“Because I was in the front line, my photos were published on social media,” she says. “My family members saw them, and they blamed me a lot that I risked my life.”
Women had started street protests against Taliban rule just two days after the group took power. The Taliban cracked down on them immediately, seeking to suppress dissent wherever possible. In some cases, women were detained for merely attending.
Although there are no official records of people arrested, the number of women detained is believed to be high. In one case, the Taliban forced 13 female protesters to ‘confess’ in a recorded video that their actions were wrong and commit to not doing it again. They then published this video on social media.
After losing her job as a high school teacher, Sahar managed to find work teaching primary school in girls a private school.
Seven months after the Taliban took power, they held an “educational workshop” in Bamyan for girls and women on 1 April last year in a sports gymnasium.
Sahar decided to join, but says she later realised it was a “deceptive trick” by the Taliban – the workshop was in fact a propaganda program.
According to Sahar, many women tried to leave when they also realised the true agenda. But the Taliban security forces prevented them.
“There were a few short speeches and then as the program was ending, when I realized that I was not given time to speak, I went to the stage without delay and said it was my turn. The host didn’t say anything and gave me the mic. I said, we women do not support you and your government in any way! How can we support a system that has deprived women of the most basic rights, closed the school gates to our sisters, and imposed hundreds of restrictions on women’s lives?”
She had not yet finished speaking when the Taliban representatives walked out of the gymnasium. “But I finished my words,” Sahar says.
After her speech, the women and girls present went on stage and tore up the Taliban’s propaganda banners.
However, Sahar knew she had made herself a target. With the help of friends, she slipped out of the gymnasium with a changed dress and headscarf. “The Taliban decided from that same day to find and punish me and the other girls who tore the banner,” she adds.
Sadly for Sahar, it is not difficult to find a female protester in the small area of Bamyan. Soon, the Taliban intelligence found Sahar’s workplace. Within ten days, Taliban forces descended on her classroom.
“They had decided to take me away from the school with them, but the principal of our school would not let them take me alone. They said that you cannot detain our teacher as long as she is teaching in the school. After many disputes, the principal of the school spoke with the Taliban governor about the situation. When the Taliban governor came to the school, they did not detain me.”
But it was not the end of Sahar’s troubles. During those days, the media reported that a number of girls and women were being held by the Taliban after protesting. The reports apparently put more pressure on the Taliban officials in Bamyan. Taliban members returned with threats to Sahar to force her to speak on national television, which is under the control of the Taliban, and say that no girl is in custody.
Although Sahar was forced to do the interview, she did not give up. Instead she planned a candlelight vigil, that was in part a demonstration, in memory of the victims of the deadly attack on the Kaaj educational center in Kabul where scores of students were killed and injured.
Planning this was not easy. She wrote her contact number on scraps of paper and during the vigil managed to exchange numbers with a number of other girls to organize a protest.
That same night, Sahar received at least 20 calls from other girls. They decided to protest at Bamyan University the very next day.
About 70 female students pledged to participate. The first obstacle was the entrance gate of the university, which was closed to the girls. After 40 minutes, the protest managed to pass this obstacle. They wanted to march from Bamyan University’s Zahak Square, but the Taliban governor and some religious scholars blocked their way and tried to prevent it.
Undeterred, the girls continued their march, but then Taliban forces showed up with death threats and cracking down on anyone trying to cover the protest for the media.
The Taliban have also been accused of torturing women in protests. Human rights organizations have documented numerous cases of the Taliban’s treatment of the imprisoned protesters with shocking accounts of mistreatment. In a report by Amnesty International published 10 months ago, the treatment of detained women was described as “terrible”.
“The Taliban beat us on our breasts and in between our legs,” a women said in the report. “They did this to us so that we could not show (our injuries) to the world.”
Shukria Barakzai, the former ambassador of Afghanistan in Norway, told Rukhshana Media that for the first time, women are exposing the Taliban’s behavior towards them in prisons and talking about physical violence and sexual assault.
According to Mrs Barakzai, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan had galvanised women to band together, uniting them more than ever against their common enemy.
Taking the battle from the streets to homes
After that protest when Sahar was threatened with death by Taliban forces, she decided to continue her struggle in another way.
She and three of her friends set up a free education center for girls deprived of education in Bamyan. They volunteer to teach around 200 female students. But they also continue to publicly raise their voices.
With the Taliban violently shutting down street protests, the women changed tack, instead holding protests indoors and in unknown places. It challenged the Taliban. Women were still expressing their defiance publicly, but they were doing it more safely – sending pictures and videos of their gatherings to the media. Sometimes the language of those protests is biting and full of anger. Sometimes they demonstrate by setting fire to photos of the Taliban founder and current supreme leader and other members of the Taliban, or throwing them in the toilet.
When Darya*, a protestor, watched a video of a girl who burned her educational and work documents in protest against the banning of women’s right to study and work, she felt inspired. Darya recorded herself setting fire to photos of Mullah Hebatullah, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, and Nada Mohammad Nadim, the Taliban officials with anger and hatred, chanting “Right, justice and freedom”.
“Why should a girl give up all her achievements and bury them in the ground for a terrorist group?” Darya asks.
Following the release of the video, Darya was identified by the Taliban, arrested, and interrogated.
She says no policewoman was present as she was interrogated. And her brother was used as psychological bait. She was under intense mental pressure due to the extreme behavior and tone of the Taliban forces who tried to force her to confess that her actions were wrong.
“Their interrogation method was harsh. My brother was also present in that room, they threatened me with the death of my family members unless I told the names of those I am in contact with,” she says. “The Taliban punched me on the head and slapped me around the face. I lost my balance and fainted.”
Darya spent a week in detention and 15 days under house arrest. She was released with a guarantee before being transferred to the women’s prison of Panjshir province.
The severity of the Taliban’s violence against women who protest has also worried families. For this reason, many families are the main obstacle on the path of women who want to protest. Many fear for the lives of their children.
Fatima*, 22, a third-year student at Balkh Faculty of Law and Political Science and her sister, Sajeda*, 24, had organized and participated in women’s indoor protests many times, hidden from the eyes of their family members.
Fatima organized a protest against the closing of universities to girls with the slogan “Education is everyone’s right” on January 30 this year. She believes even the indoor protests are having an impact, and they will continue to organise.
While some suggest that the protests are ineffective, many women believe otherwise. In a Human Rights Watch’s report on the experience of women protestors from the Taliban detention center, one of the detainees says a prominent member of the Taliban shouted at them, “You have put us in a bad situation – because of you the world has not recognized us.”
Many women who speak with Rulhshana Media have a similar story. But their fear of what more could happen is stronger. Some believe that the Taliban won’t stop at restricting women in the streets but will also attempt to reach women in their very homes.
In the words of Shahriar Dadwar, a Persian poet who said, “If I guess you sitting on this roof, in ambush for a bird, and you make a sign that flight is prohibited, what are you doing with chicks sitting in the nest?… Imagine that you are hitting, that you are cutting, killing, what do you do with the inevitable sprouting?”
*Note: Due to security sensitivities, names have been changed.
