Dear John,
I will never forget the three weeks leading up to August 15 one year ago, when the final U.S. troops left Afghanistan. I spent those weeks on the phone, seemingly around the clock, talking with contacts inside Afghanistan, with U.S. government officials, journalists and volunteers here and on the ground in Afghanistan, with feminist leaders and activists, all working to secure the safe escape of Afghan women leaders whose lives were threatened as the Taliban seized power.
As well, I was working to help colleagues whose family members in Afghanistan were desperately seeking to leave. Of greatest concern were their sisters and young nieces whose futures were surely bleak under a Taliban regime. When things seemed most hopeless, we despaired. We agonized over whether the decisions we were making and the instructions we passed along about safe houses and meeting places – all through secure communications systems – would endanger their lives or safety.
We cried tears of joy when against all odds, we managed to evacuate some of them to one of the “lily-pad” countries that had agreed to accept Afghan refugees before, ultimately, they would hopefully make their way to the U.S. Even as we celebrated, my heart was breaking as I imagined the tearful good-byes they said to their families, not knowing if they would ever again see each other.
But the great tragedy is the women and girls left behind in Afghanistan and the horrific restrictions since imposed by the Taliban. At first, the Taliban ordered women to stay home for their “safety” but in the year since, the Taliban has issued edicts severely restricting women from leaving their homes or traveling on public transportation, prohibiting women from paid employment, and even from seeking medical care without a male relative to escort them. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that now bans most women and girls from education past 6th grade. The Taliban regime includes no female cabinet members, despite promises of a more inclusive government.
Yet despite the restrictions, women have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest of each new edict and to demand their fundamental human rights. For this, they have suffered beatings, arrests and torture by Taliban soldiers. We celebrate their courage and in our weekly roundup of top stories, we include a gut-wrenching first-person account by activist-journalist Mursal Ayar of her arrest and imprisonment for standing up for women’s rights.
Ms. was among the first to bring readers information on the Taliban and its horrific gender apartheid edicts in the late 1990s and for twenty years after the fall of the Taliban, we followed and reported on the incredible progress for women and girls – in education and employment, in elective office, and in health care, especially the reduction in maternal mortality. We will not forget these brave women and girls and we vow to continue to report on the struggles for women’s human rights in Afghanistan and everywhere.
