Life under Taliban rule

Before theTaliban’s occupation,Afghanistanwas a country where there was relative democracy and human rights and women’s rights campaigns were widespread. The World was investing in women to secure their rights andhundreds of organizations defended people’s rights in Kabul. However, after the Taliban reimposed their rule on the country, all of us who worked for and alongside foreign organizations, were suddenly in twice as much danger as everyone else. I had wanted to work within women’s rights since I was a teenager. Growing up in a remote village in Northern Afghanistan, where people were poorly educated and lived in poverty, I witnessed the terrible treatment of girls and women in Afghanistan on a daily basis. Many girls were forced to marry at a young age, and their husbands, brothers, fathers and family members beat hundreds of women. Despite not knowing any different, I felt the injustice of it and often thought about how I could change the place of women in our society for the better. After finishing school, I had the chance to be the first in my family to go to university. At my university in Kabul, I met other like-minded people who wanted to change our country and I participated to events and demonstrations for women. Later, I started working with a British charity that supported and educated vulnerable people, particularly women. I was proud to be part of a team providing advice to vulnerable and marginalised women, particularly those who were rejected from society because they did not conform to traditional values such as marriage, or because they did not want to put up with domestic violence and abuse. I received many serious threats on my life from the beginning of my human rights activities. On one occasion, we received a warning from the national intelligence services that our charity office was marked out for a Taliban attack. Nevertheless, I never let these threats change my behaviour, because the presence of foreign forces alongside the Afghan security forces encouraged us to continue our human rights activities. Unfortunately, I had felt a false sense of security, and after the fall of the country, on August 15, 2021, the ground fell out from beneath our feet. Everything went badly wrong and the people of Afghanistan once again witnessed the presence and rule of one of the most extreme terrorist groups in the World knows as the Taliban. I knew that staying in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule would be suicidal for me. One of my relatives, who is a member of the Taliban, had already previously threatened to kill me and, as the country coordinator of a British charity, who had worked alongside foreign governments like Canada, they had already marked me out as a spy and a traitor. I knew I had no choice but to try to leave the country and, in the first days of the evacuation, I rushed to Kabul airport with my family in a state of panic. My wife, daughter, my son and I held out there in the chaos for 3 days, with crowds of the most desperate people surrounding us. Although, as a family with two young children, we were overwhelmed. My 5-year-old daughter was struggling with chronic shortness of breath. Eventually, we were forced to give up as my daughter’s condition was worsening. After leaving the airport, I received a message from my employer promising that we would be transferred to the Kabul airport by bus for evacuation, but, unfortunately, this never happened. In the following days, my family and I were in a bad situation. My daughter was acutely ill and was fighting for her life. One day, when I went out to get medicine for my daughter, my nightmare became even worse. I was arrested by the Taliban. They took me to a large house in a remote area and there, I was tortured. They beat me with a pipe and I did not think I would see my family again. Because of the chaos of the early days of the Taliban’s rule, I was able to escape from their makeshift prison under cover of night after just two days of imprisonment. But, I had received the message loud and clear: I was no longer safe in my own country. After that, I did not dare to show my face in public and I went underground. At that time, I moved somewhere new every few days, not knowing when I might be found. During that dark time, when I did not know how I would keep going, it was the kindness of a stranger that gave me some hope again. Someone from Finland, who I had never met, reached out to me on social media and offered to help me financially. Life in Afghanistan had become too much for me, and with the kindness of this stranger, I was able to escape to Iran. This stranger, who had become a friend, even secured an invitation letter from the Finnish government to apply for a visa to Finland, but – since I did not have enough money -, it failed to be an option for me. I lived in Iran for months, hiding in an abandoned outhouse because I was living there without a visa and I lived a life of destitution, as I could not even find informal work. In Iran, the treatment of Afghan refugees is brutal and those who are found by the authorities are illegally deported to Afghanistan. Deportation is often a death sentence because Afghan border guards kill any deportees they find. I was one of the lucky ones. When the police deported me to Afghanistan after threats and torture, I managed to evade the Afghan border guards and survived. For more than eleventh months now, I have been living in different hiding places without seeing my family. I have always said that having a daughter is a gift from God and I desperately want to be together with my daughter, who is really sick. It pains me that my family can only eat one meal a day and when I think about the fact that the Taliban could find me any day, or find my family and harm them, it is too much to bear.