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The Afghan women risking their lives to take on the Taliban
As troubling reports emerge about the treatment of women in Afghan districts that have fallen to the Taliban, SBS News meets those on the ground who are speaking up for women’s rights at great personal cost.
Published 26 July 2021 5:31pm
By Claudia Farhart
For two decades, Fawzia Koofi has used her platform as one of Afghanistan’s most prominent female politicians to speak up for women’s rights.
It’s a vocation that’s come at a cost; and she says she knows more are being plotted.
“I think it’s what I have gone through that keeps me going,” she says from her home in Kabul.
Fawzia Koofi recovering in hospital last year after surviving an assassination attempt. Source: Supplied
“I have gone through so much that I don’t even know what a regular life means, to be honest. Sometimes, when I travel abroad and I see how people sit in a coffee shop or walk, this looks very strange to me because all my life has either been a political fight, a struggle, or oppression.”
All my life has either been a political fight, a struggle, or oppression. - Fawzia Koofi
That struggle began the day Ms Koofi was born; left out in the harsh Afghan sun to die because she was a girl.
She survived, becoming the only girl in her family to go to school and eventually earning a master's degree.
When the Taliban fell in late 2001 after a brutal six-year rule that saw girls and women banned from schools and work, Ms Koofi entered politics.
She rose through the ranks, becoming the Afghan parliament’s first-ever female deputy second speaker and the first woman to lead an Afghan political party.
Fawzia Koofi, pictured in 2012, is a leading Afghan women's rights champion. Source: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
Then last year, just weeks after the most recent attempt on her life - in which she was shot in the arm in an attack the Taliban has denied involvement in - she came face to face with the militants. She was one of the only women in the room for the Afghan government’s historic peace talks with the Taliban.
“My injured hand was still in a cast and the wound was open, but I tried to never demonstrate that I'm being affected or afraid or in stress,” she says.
“Their thinking was women are just there to confront them; they do not have logic and they are not equipped with knowledge relating to their country. But after being in the room for a few days with them, talking about matters of my country, I think they have started to change their perspective and they have become a little bit more respectful.”
Ms Koofi says the ongoing negotiations have not yet turned to the question of women’s rights, but she is not prepared to use the issue as a bargaining chip with the Taliban.
Fawzia Koofi, left, with her arm still bandaged, at peace talks with the Taliban. Source: Supplied
“The woman and human rights issue is not a priority for either party,” she says. “Each party is trying to prioritise military gains, people are not even in the forefront of their focus, and that is worrisome,” she says.
“But the Taliban will never be convinced, even if they will be confronted, about their views on the Islamic rights of women.”
History threatening to repeat itself
When the Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996, until 2001, severe restrictions were imposed on women.
Girls were banned from schools and almost all women were forced to stop working. They could only leave home if chaperoned by a male relative while wearing a burqa and were only allowed contact with men who were family.
Women who were caught flouting the rules were often punished publicly and violently.
Today, Taliban representatives insist they have changed their views on women, but they have failed to detail how.
Reports are already emerging from Afghan districts that have recently fallen to Taliban control that girls schools are being closed and so-called ‘dress code’ pamphlets are being distributed.
Civil servant Gaisu Yari is one of a group of Afghan women’s rights activists who have lobbied the Taliban directly in recent months.
The group recently spoke to a Taliban representative via the social audio app Clubhouse, asking them two questions: do you believe in elections and do you believe in women’s right to work?
Gaisu Yari has been questioning the Taliban on their women's rights policies. Source: Supplied
“They said we don’t believe in elections or democracy and we can only allow women to work when it’s necessary - their example was doctors,” Ms Yari, 33, says from her office in Kabul.
“It was the first time the Taliban came forward using a very modern tool to talk to people. Everybody told them 'you can’t just go in the streets and kill people, you can’t stop girls from going to schools.'”
It’s a fight that is particularly personal for Ms Yari.
Escaping forced marriage
At just six years old, Ms Yari was forcibly engaged to a pro-Taliban commander’s son of the same age. She was due to marry him when she turned 18.
“It was two months before my marriage ceremony, everything was decided, and my mum kind of surrendered, saying ‘I cannot save you, you just have to go,’” she says.
“I knew if I went to his house I wouldn’t be allowed to continue my education. I received my visa - my fiancé and this warlord didn’t know anything about it - and I fled the country. I went to the United States."
I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to continue my education. I received my visa ... and I fled the country. - Gaisu Yari
Ms Yari went on to earn a bachelor's and master's degree in the US, returning to Afghanistan in 2015 and eventually joining the government’s Independent Civil Service Commission.
She kept a low profile until she learned her fiancé and his father had been killed by a rival faction.
She has not looked back since and says she is not afraid to speak out publicly to defend the values the country has built over the past 20 years.
Gaisu Yari on her graduation day in the United States. Source: Supplied
“We are under threat, women who are very vocal and especially focused on women’s rights.”
“It’s hard, the psychological pressure every single woman faces here, but we have to resist, we have to sustain our activism. If we don’t do that, I don’t think any women from other countries will come and do that for us.”
Ms Yari says she knows she and other activists are being monitored by the Taliban, but it’s a risk she is willing to take.
“Will we lose our lives? Maybe. Maybe the next day when the Taliban comes in and sees I’m not wearing a scarf, that I’m wearing certain clothes in certain ways, they may kill me, but I’m sure there are others that are going to continue the fight.”
“Yes, we are ready to lose our lives, but I don't think we're ready to lose the future of our children - especially our girls.”
A generation at risk
In the 20 years since the Taliban was removed from power, a generation of Afghan women and girls have embraced the opportunity to get educated.
More than 20 per cent of the country’s workforce is now made up of women.
While peace talks continue, US intelligence agencies are predicting the Afghan government could collapse completely within six months of their military withdrawal.
Afghanistan researcher Dr Susanne Schmeidl says many of them are now facing a difficult choice; abandon the country, or stay and risk losing the lives they have built.
Gaisu Yari, Fawzia Koofi and other Afghan activists standing up for women's rights. Source: Supplied
“Particularly Kabul, but other urban centres, have become a safe haven for an educated, more modern oriented urban middle class, but also more recently to internally displaced people who have been fleeing from conflict and poverty and a lack of access to services,” she says.
“For most of them, the outlooks are bleak, and there's a good chance that with the Taliban coming back to power, a lot of this human capital - people called it a demographic dividend - will be leaving Afghanistan.”
Her family fled Afghanistan in the midst of the Taliban’s rule in 1998, living in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran before coming to Australia on humanitarian visas when she was 12 years old.
Despite having no formal education before the eighth grade, Ms Akbari is now studying for a PhD at Canberra’s Australian National University, focusing on the peace negotiations with the Taliban.
Farkhondeh Akbari is completing her PhD thesis on peace negotiations and insurgent groups like the Taliban. Source: SBS News
“The Taliban are not compromising on anything because they already got what they wanted from the US; a timetable for withdrawal and international legitimacy and recognition by making them a partner to the US in signing an agreement with them,” she says.
“The situation is very tense. There is a dilemma between 'are you going to stay and fight and die, or are you going to escape from the country and leave?'”
Ms Akbari’s goal was to ultimately return to Afghanistan and use her expertise to better the country. But she is a Hazara woman, an ethnic minority that has already been experiencing heightened violence over the past few months as the Taliban has gained more ground.
Now she is unsure whether a return will be possible.
“The reason I've been studying Afghanistan is to prepare myself, so, in a way, it is very heartbreaking that as I am finishing my studies and it's time to go back, the space for people like me is shrinking more and more in the country, and we might not be welcomed,” she says.
“But the struggle for human rights, for freedom, will continue, and I will play my very little role to do what I can.”
