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Hopes crushed by return of Taliban, Kabul women see no future in Afghanistan – National

Khalida regarded out the window of her Kabul condominium tower at a metropolis that not appeared to have a spot for her because the Taliban returned with their gun-mounted pickups.

The 30-year-old as soon as represented the promise of Afghanistan, an informed, skilled breadwinner with levels in laptop science and regulation, and a job at a nationwide firm.

Beginning as a receptionist, she climbed her means into administration, whereas supporting a brother with well being issues that forestall him from working, and fogeys who’re refugees in Uzbekistan.

However she hasn’t been allowed to return to work since August, when the Taliban looted her firm’s autos and informed girls to remain residence whereas its fighters realized how one can behave round girls.

Learn extra:
Contained in the Kabul protected homes the place Afghans wait to be evacuated to Canada

“I used to be supporting 11 folks in my household,” Khalida mentioned, after cooking lunch for guests on the condominium she shares together with her brother, his spouse and an aunt. “And now I don’t know what to do.”

The economic system has collapsed, financial institution withdrawals have been restricted, the nation has been renamed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and girls are dealing with the lack of hard-earned freedoms.

“I don’t see any future for the ladies in Afghanistan,” mentioned Khalida, one in every of many Afghans who informed International Information they would depart, many to Canada, reasonably than stay below the Taliban.


Khalida, at her residence in Kabul.


Stewart Bell/International Information

The return of the Taliban has shattered the lives of many Afghans, significantly girls, who have been all however enslaved by the militants once they held the nation from 1996 to 2001.

Khalida is a part of the technology of Afghans who grew up believing their nation was on the trail to modernity. Simply 10 years previous when the Taliban was ousted in 2001, she dared to need extra.

Western army intervention was a response to 9/11. The Taliban had harboured Al Qaeda and its coaching camps. However the NATO mission’s finish objective was to stabilize the nation so Afghans may construct a nation.

Worldwide improvement and teaching programs targeted closely on girls, who returned to varsities and universities, rejoined the paid workforce and have become a part of the federal government and civil establishments.

That would have been the legacy of a army operation that price the lives of 158 Canadian troops. However after 20 years, the U.S. wished out and a slipshod withdrawal precipitated the collapse of the federal government and allowed the Taliban to take over.

Two-and-a-half months into the Taliban’s second try at governing, there’s little cause for optimism: girls are excluded from cupboard, girls’s sports activities are banned, the ladies’s ministry has been transformed into the ministry of vice and advantage, and secondary faculty women have been despatched residence.


Images of ladies lined up in Taliban-controlled Kabul.


Stewart Bell/International Information

Taliban officers have been imprecise when requested concerning the place of ladies below their rule. In an interview at his Kabul workplace, Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid mentioned girls can be allowed to return to work as soon as it was protected for them.

Requested by International Information whether or not women can be returning to secondary colleges, he gave a lot the identical reply. “The leaders are engaged on laws to offer the right surroundings for varsity women,” he mentioned.

Different Taliban members and officers have been equally unclear of their responses to questions on girls, referring to shariah and head coverings, or just saying the federal government would determine.

The final time the Taliban got here to Kabul, Khalida was a four-year-old. Her household fled to Peshawar, Pakistan, and remained there for eight years, till the Taliban was gone.

She started working for a Kabul firm (she requested International Information to not determine the agency or her final title) in 2010, whereas furthering her schooling, and combating her means into administration.

Learn extra:
At an Islamabad lodge, Afghans who labored for Canada’s army await a brand new life

Over time, her fast household left. One brother, a former U.S. Military interpreter, moved to the U.S. in 2014. One other brother went to Calgary, alongside together with her grandparents.

Earlier this yr, her mother and father and two sisters crossed into Tajikistan, hoping to get to Canada. Khalida stayed behind. She needed to hold working. Her household trusted her revenue.

She was on the workplace when the town fell in August. Centered on her work, she didn’t know till her father known as to inform her the militants have been taking the town. She grabbed her laptop computer and went out into streets full of folks on the run.

That night, she noticed the Taliban from her condominium window, of their autos, flying their white flags. An evening watchman at her workplace phoned and mentioned the Taliban have been taking the corporate’s autos and papers.

“I used to be very scared,” she mentioned.


Gunmen in truck flying Taliban flag in Kabul.


Stewart Bell/International Information

She by no means went again to the workplace, and she or he is not gathering a wage. She noticed the Taliban on tv, telling girls to remain residence as a result of its fighters didn’t know how one can conduct themselves round girls.

Her firm could by no means re-open, no less than not in the identical means. The proprietor was linked to the earlier authorities, making it susceptible, and the Taliban considers her business religiously forbidden.

She heard Canada had provided to resettle 20,000 Afghans, a quantity later raised to 40,000, and she or he utilized. “I feel for the women, there isn’t a hope in Afghanistan,” she mentioned.

Many in Kabul have given up. Disheartened and seemingly nonetheless in shock that it occurred, and so rapidly, they will’t think about residing in a Taliban nation. And they’re afraid for his or her kids.


Muska Azizi, an engineer engaged on her MBA.


Jeff Semple/International Information

Muska Azizi mentioned she didn’t intend to search out out what the Taliban had in retailer this time round. She had seen sufficient. She and her husband, who works for a Canadian NGO, have utilized for resettlement in Canada.

Azizi, who stored her title when she married, was working as an engineer at a authorities ministry and learning for her grasp’s diploma in enterprise at night time when the Taliban got here to city. She hasn’t returned to work since.

“We don’t learn about our future,” she mentioned.

She mentioned it was onerous for skilled girls to simply accept the Taliban and their inflexible codes that limit girls’s clothes, schooling and careers.

A mom of two, she was involved about her lady and what it would imply if she grows up below the confinements imposed by the Taliban. “We’re serious about our daughter’s future,” she mentioned.


Nasiba Hashimi.


Stewart Bell/International Information

Nasiba Hashimi was additionally determined to go away Taliban Afghanistan. Within the courtyard of a compound secured with razor wire, she held a small photograph in her arms. It confirmed her eye swollen and bruised.

Hashimi got here to Kabul from Aybak, in northern Afghanistan. At age 17, she married a person who turned out to be violent and believed girls belonged at residence, she mentioned in an interview.

He would lock her within the residence when he left to wish. He forbid her from furthering her research. And he beat her and threatened to take her kids if she left him, she added.

Eighteen months in the past, her husband got here residence at round 11 p.m., having visited his mother and father, and attacked her, she mentioned. She mentioned she didn’t know why, however that he dragged her to her room.

Telling her he would ensure no person else ever married her, he beat her, punching her face, choking her and smothering her with a pillow till the neighbours heard her kids crying.


A Kabul park that has change into a tent metropolis for Afghans who fled to the capital from different elements of the nation.


Stewart Bell/International Information

She reported him to the police and left him, however her husband and his household later phoned her and mentioned they might kill her if she remarried, and that they knew folks within the Taliban, she mentioned.

She remarried a human-rights activist and so they moved to Kabul when the north fell to the Taliban. They’re staying at a protected home whereas they wait to be accepted as refugees to Canada.

“I wish to depart Afghanistan as quickly as attainable,” she mentioned.

She mentioned she couldn’t sleep. Her husband was in danger below the Taliban due to his work selling girls’s rights. And she or he nervous about her daughters, ages 5 and 6. She didn’t need them rising up below the Taliban.

“Each second right here, we’re in danger,” she mentioned.


Women at Cam non-public faculty.


Stewart Bell/International Information

On the Cam non-public faculty in Kabul, the following technology of Afghan women appeared mercifully carefree. They paid no consideration to the white flag the Taliban ordered the college to erect within the playground.

They sang “If you happen to’re comfortable and you already know it” at recess whereas their principal defined that enrollment was lower in half when the Taliban forbid schooling for women above Grade 6.

“I really feel actually unhealthy for them,” mentioned the principal. Like the remainder of the employees, he was not receiving a wage as a result of the scholars’ households weren’t being paid and couldn’t afford faculty charges.

In her workplace, the place a Taliban flag rests on her desk, she mentioned she tells the women that every thing will return to regular and that they are going to be capable of proceed their research. Whether or not that may occur stays to be seen.

Ali Khanzada, who based the college 9 years in the past, informed International Information he had fled Afghanistan after receiving threats from the Taliban, who tore down the college banners and expressed their disapproval over his plan to companion with a Canadian college.

He mentioned he obtained a letter from the Taliban accusing him of encouraging Western thought and turning college students into infidels. He’s now attempting to flee to Canada.


Maheia Bita, 18, in Islamabad.


Jeff Semple/International Information

Throughout the border in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, an 18-year-old Afghan lady on her approach to Canada together with her mother and father and little brother mentioned it was humiliating to stay below the Taliban.

You needed to do no matter they mentioned, simply because they’d weapons, mentioned Maheia Bita, the daughter of an exiled girls’s rights activist. “They don’t settle for anyone else’s logic.”

Maheia was one of many fortunate ones. She was capable of escape. Quickly, she will probably be in Canada, however she wasn’t positive what to really feel about that. She was nervous about being alone and lacking her associates.

One among them not too long ago received engaged, she mentioned, though she is youthful than Maheia. One other organized a pretend engagement, after listening to that women have been being married off to Taliban fighters.

She couldn’t say what would have occurred had she stayed in Kabul.

“Perhaps I’d simply be married off,” she mentioned.

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