In a small village in northern Afghanistan, Nazia was at home with her three young sons and daughter when they were caught off guard after the Taliban fighters knocked on the door.
They have been expecting this to happen anytime soon and Najia’s 25-year-old daughter Manizha, knew they were coming.
In the previous three days, this has been a common practice of Taliban fighters to demand food for up to 15 fighters.
According to her daughter, Manizha said, “My mother told them, ‘I am poor, how can I cook for you? (The Taliban) started beating her. My mother collapsed, and they hit her with their guns — AK47s.”
Manizha shouted at the fighter to stop. She said they threw grenades into the next room and stopped for a moment before escaping as the flames spread and The mother-of-four died from the beating.
What happens on Nazia’s home in Faryab on July 12 was a horrifying preview of the threats women across Afghanistan are currently facing after the Taliban hijacked the capital Kabul.
For security reasons, the source uses aliases for Najia and Manizha protect their identities.
Taliban terrorists took control of dozens of provincial capitals left unprotected by the withdrawal of US and ally soldiers in under ten days.
The locals were caught off guard, by the speed of the militants’ advance.
Some women said they were obscured when they left the house and did not have time to buy a burqa to comply with the Taliban’s rule that they should be accompanied by male relatives.
For Afghan women, flowing cloth never regains the sudden and catastrophic loss of rights gained over more than 20 years: the right to work, study, move and even live in peace, Indicates that you are afraid of. When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they closed girls’ schools and banned women from working.
After the US invasion in 2001, restrictions on women were relaxed, and local efforts to improve women’s rights backed by international groups and donors, even when the war intensified, provided new legal protection. It led to the founding of.
In 2009, the Elimination of Violence Against Women law criminalized rape, battery and forced marriage and made it illegal to stop women or girls from working or studying.
This time, the Taliban is promising to form an “Afghan inclusive Islamic government,” although it’s not clear what form that will take and if the new leadership will include women.
Farzana Kochai, who was serving as a member of the Afghan Parliament, says she doesn’t know what comes next. She said,”There has been no clear announcement about the form of the government in the future — do we have a parliament in the future government or not?” She’s also concerned about her future freedoms as a woman. “This is something that concerns me more,” she said, “Every woman is thinking about this. We are just trying to have a clue … would women be allowed to work and to occupy a job or not?”
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said Monday that under the Taliban girls would be allowed to study. He said,“Schools will be open and the girls and the women, they will be going to schools, as teachers, as students,” But stories from locals on the ground paint a different picture — and there’s a deep mistrust of militants who caused such misery under their last rule.
In July, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said in areas controlled by the Taliban, women had been ordered not to attend health services without a male guardian. TV was banned, and teachers and students were instructed to wear turbans and grow beards.
Religious scholars, government officials, journalists, human rights defenders and women had become victims of targeted killings, the commission said. One of them was Mina Khairi, a 23-year-old killed in a car bombing in June. Her father, Mohammad Harif Khairi, who also lost his wife and another daughter in the blast, said the young broadcaster had been receiving death threats for months.
When the Taliban last controlled Afghanistan, women who disobeyed orders were beaten.
The Taliban denied killing Najia, the mother in Faryab province, but their words are contradicted by witnesses and local officials who confirmed the death of a 45-year-old woman whose home was set alight.
A neighbor who yelled at the men to stop said many women in Najia’s village are the widows of Afghan soldiers. They earn living selling milk, but the Taliban “won’t allow that,” she said. “We don’t have men in our house, what shall we do? We want schools, clinics, and freedom like other women, men — other people.”
The Taliban’s takeover of the country was so quick that some women found themselves without the requisite female uniform for Taliban rule.
One woman, who is not being named for security reasons, said her household had just one to two burqas to share between her, her sister, and their mother. She said, “If the worse comes to worse and we don’t have burqa, we have to get a bedsheet or something to make it a bigger scarf.”
Burqa prices surged as much as tenfold in Kabul as women raced to beat the militants ahead of their advance, according to another woman in the city, who is also not being named for security reasons. Some didn’t make it to the markets before they closed on Sunday, as store owners rushed to get home.
She said she’d spent hours at a bank on Sunday trying to withdraw as much money as possible to see the family through the coming days of uncertainty.
She said, “It was so unexpected, no one expected this to happen this soon. Even people would be like, ‘Oh, Kabul can defend itself for a year or so,’ but morale is lost. The army is just handing it over to the Taliban.”
She fears for her life, but also the collapse of a government people fought so hard to build and the end of freedoms for Afghan women.
She said, “As a woman, they just keep us inside. We fought for years to get out, do we need to fight again for the same things? To get the permission to work, to get the permission to go to the hospital alone?.”
Over the last 10 days, a succession of Taliban victories over dozens of provincial capitals took Afghan women closer to a past they desperately wanted to leave behind.
Pashtana Durrani, the founder and executive director of Learn, a nonprofit focused on education and women’s rights, said she had run out of tears for her country.
“I have cried so much there are no more tears left in my eyes to mourn. We have been in mourning the fall of Afghanistan for now quite some time. So I’m not feeling very well. On the contrary, I’m feeling very hopeless,” she said.
Durrani said she’d received text messages from boys as well as girls, who despaired that years of study were “all for nothing.”
She said the Taliban kept talking about girls’ education, but they hadn’t defined what that meant. Islamic studies are assumed, but “what about gender education? What about professional education?” she asked. “If you think about it, it makes you hopeless because there’s no answer for it.”
In a tweet, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to all abuses. “International humanitarian law and human rights, especially the hard-won gains of women and girls, must be preserved,” he said.
In chaotic scenes at Kabul airport Monday, desperate Afghans scaled an air bridge in attempt to board planes out of the country. But for many millions of people, there is no escape.
The woman in Kabul who spent hours at the bank Sunday said even if she could find a flight, without a visa she has nowhere to go. The only other option was to stay inside and hope to avoid attracting attention.
She said,“Going out or doing anything else can risk our life.”
As the US and allies evacuated staff members, Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged international donors not to abandon Afghanistan.
“Many, many cannot get out and will be in great need both for urgent humanitarian assistance and for other essential services like education,” she said. “It’s the wrong time now for donors to be saying, ‘Oh, we’re done now in Afghanistan.'”
Women across the country live in fear of the same knock at the door Najia heard last month. Her daughter, Manizha, said she hasn’t returned to the house since her mother’s death. She doesn’t go outside much at all.
She said,”Taliban don’t let any women out without a male relative. Men are the only ones allowed out. They can go to work.”
“If I need something, how I am I supposed to get it? It’s a punishment. It’s not Islam. They call themselves Muslim. It’s not right for them to punish women.”
Sources: Edition.cnn, Kimt, 7news, Californianewstimes
All these atrocities done to Muslim women by Muslims,you never hear squawk from Democrats here.We have Muslim women in DC that are vulgar,howl,accuse America and Americans of all sorts of crimes.Now they are as quiet as a dormouse
oboma helped the taliban get full control and is part of the taliban, how anyone could let taliban operate is beyond human thinking. Put the right people in charge and the taliban will run like the little girls they rape. MANY AMERICAN POLITICIANS NEED TO GIVE UP THEIR SON’S AND DAUGHTERS TO THE TALIBAN, IT SEEMS TO BE OK WITH THEM TO LET THIS HAPPEN TO OTHER PEOPLE, SO, LETS GIVE THEM THE POLITICIANS CHILDREN