KABUL – From the perspective of an Afghan girl, life here is hell.
Days are difficult and full of despair. It is a place where you can never reach your dreams.
Listen to a recording of this article:
I have friends who had big dreams. They wanted to be educated and useful people for their country, to serve Afghanistan.
But these dreams were destroyed after the Taliban came to the power – like a dream, short and faded.
Some of my friends got married and gave up on their dreams. Now they have children.
Some of my friends were studying with me, online and in person. But after a short time, they stopped studying as well. When I asked why, they said: “Even if we study, what then? Schools are closed, we don’t even have money for internet and the course fee, so why not learn tailoring instead? We can earn money that way and we can support our families and ourselves financially.”
All of them gave similar answers.
Some of us are maintaining our online studies.
They say: “Life is miserable. There is no education, no work, we can’t even go outside the house freely, so why should we study?” They have lost their hope to continue, but still they go on.
There remain many Afghan girl students in the online education world who continue to have hope and persevere until they reach their goal.
Real life is very different compared to the virtual world. The online world is a better place. We can study there, and between us, there is a lot of competition in studying, too.
So in real life, some of the girls learned tailoring and sewing.
Some of my friends, after the Taliban came to power, left with their families to foreign countries. We remained in Afghanistan, with a dark future.
We could no longer go to school. We dreamed that one day we would take the Kankor, a university entrance exam, and enter university. Or even better, we would become the top scorer in the Kankor exam like Shamsia Alizada, who was 18 when she earned the highest score in the country in 2020.
These dreams faded and will never become reality. On Sunday, July 20, the results of the boys Kankor exam were announced, but there was no news about the girls. Previously, the highest Kankor scores belonged to the female category, but now there isn’t even a mention of girls.
Parks have been banned for women. They are not allowed to go to restaurants. It’s like being a prisoner in a cage. The restrictions are increasing day by day.
Life for girls is like hell. These days, girls are being arrested on the streets and taken to unknown places but in my mind it’s jail – even though they observed laws about wearing the hijab.
They were taken without any reason, maybe just because they came out of the house. This situation is very bad.
The online news media outlet Rukhshana reported that a family in west Kabul claims their 17-year-old daughter disappeared after being arrested by the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
A relative of this girl, whose identity Rukhshana kept confidential, told the outlet that she went to the “Barchi Center” market around 2 p.m. on Saturday to shop and never returned home. He added that the teenage girl “was wearing a long black hijab” and the Taliban arrested her without any specific reason.
The Rukhshana media source said that after learning of his daughter’s arrest by the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue, he visited all the police districts in west Kabul and other security agencies of this group but found no trace of her.
Afghanistan International, another online news site, reported that a Kabul resident sent a video to Afghanistan International on Monday the 30th of Saratan on the Afghan calendar, or July 21 on the Gregorian calendar, reporting harassment of women in the Karte Char section of Kabul by the Taliban.
In the video received by Afghanistan International, a moment is seen where officials from the Department for the Promotion of Virtue are harassing young women. The video sender said these women “had full hijab,” but despite that, Taliban officials “insulted and humiliated” them.
According to Afghanistan International, a gynecologist in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, said in a video also sent to the news site on Monday, 30th of Saratan or July 21, that the morality police of the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue came to the hospital to arrest doctors and medical staff without a male guardian.
In the video, this woman asked, “Did you think that you martyred my brother and my father and I have no one left, and I am the only breadwinner of the house?”
Years ago, before the Taliban came to power, the Taliban killed her brother and father, so the woman had no male relatives left, according to Afghanistan International. As a survivor, she is the only one earning money and supporting the family now. That’s why she must work, even without a male guardian.
This female medical professional said she locked herself in a room to avoid being caught by the Taliban. Officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue have launched a wave of arrests of young women in Kabul in recent days.
Since Wednesday, the 25th of Saratan or July 16, dozens of women have been arrested in Shahr-e-Naw, a city north of Kabul and in the Qala-e-Fathullah, Kot-e-Sangi, and Dasht-e-Barchi parts of Kabul.
This is not the first time the Taliban have done this. In 2023, too, they arrested girls and took them to prison for not observing hijab laws.
They were tortured and later released. This is life for Afghan girls in Afghanistan. We are living in hell, locked in a cage and hoping for a time when we see good days again.
Nazanin Boniadi is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International from Aghanistan. She wrote this article.
Anya Farooqui is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International from Pakistan. She made the audio recording.
