How the Taliban’s return is killing young people

Poverty, despair and lack of opportunity are taking a heavy toll on the mental health of Afghans

Salima’s wedding day was filled with hope.

The bride wore the traditional green and a white dress.

She smiled among the hundreds of wedding guests gathered for a luxurious party.

At the end of the party, the newlyweds headed off from the northern province of Baghlan, bound for Kabul, in a flower-covered car as they started their new life together.

That happy day seems like a lost memory now.

Soon after the wedding, a familiar shadow fell over Afghanistan in the form of the Taliban.

A month ago, after nearly two years of Taliban rule, Salima ended her life. She was 33.

Under the Taliban, women have been banned from teaching, as well as studying, working, going to the park and the gym. Hamida said Salima was forced out of her job, and the couple fell into poverty and despair.

“With the arrival of the Taliban, her life became nothing, there were no lessons and no school,” Hamida told the Star, speaking in Persian. “She became mentally ill and finally, after two unsuccessful suicide attempts, she hanged herself.

“We are all shocked. My parents are very disappointed. My brother has a nervous problem after his wife committed suicide and I am afraid that we may lose him, too.”

According to a new report by a private Afghan TV channel, 347 people have tried to kill themselves in the past year; 60 have died. TOLO News tracked suicides registered in nine of the country’s 34 provinces.

It is rare for the Afghan media to provide such statistics. Suicide is a taboo subject and it’s hard for the government and international organizations to publish accurate numbers.

Since suicide is forbidden in Islam and traditionally considered shameful in Afghanistan, few families are prepared to officially register the suicide cases.

Hamida said that with the rule of the Taliban, like many women, life had become meaningless for her brother’s wife. It was a combination, she said, of the extreme poverty and the lack of hope for the future that led Salima to the point of taking her own life.

“The legacy of the Taliban’s reign of terror and fear is only misogyny, poverty, despair and mental problems.”

Last year, addressing at a UN rights forum in Geneva, Fawzia Koofi, former deputy Speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament, spoke about the problem.

“Every day there is at least one or two women who commit suicide for the lack of opportunity, for the mental health, for the pressure they receive,” Koofis said.

“The fact that girls as young as nine years old are being sold, not only because of economic pressure, but because of the fact that there is no hope for them, and for their family.”

The UN’s then-human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, condemned the massive unemployment of women, the restrictions placed on the way they dress and their access to basic services. She said at the forum that womenowned and -operated businesses have been shut down, and that 1.2 million girls no longer have access to secondary education.

Sharafuddin Azimi, a psychologist, sees severe financial, social, emotional problems and physical diseases as the main causes of suicide among young people in Afghanistan.

Azimi said that with so much uncertainty about the future, young people are confused.

“The continuation of the existing situation will result in a decrease in the level of literacy, an increase in criminal offences, immigration and addiction,” Azimi told the Star, speaking in Persian.

In the past, international organizations have published reports on Afghans’ mental health.

According to a 2017 report, the World Health Organization estimated that more than a million Afghans suffer from depressive disorders while over 1.2 million suffer from anxiety disorders. WHO said the actual figures are likely to be much higher.

In the same year, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, more than 3,000 Afghans a year attempt suicide. In Herat province alone, which accounts for more than half of the cases nationwide, there were 1,800 reported suicide attempts in 2017,1,400 of which were women, and 35 of which were successful.

Shabir is 25 and lives in a province near Afghanistan’s capital.

He said he lives in an extremist family and spends days and nights with a radical father, who is a Taliban commander.

Shabir (not his real name) is a young man who tried to take his life once, a few months ago. He continues to have suicidal thoughts, he said.

Shabir said that whenever he thinks about it he remembers his mother, and this alone prevents him from going through with it. Shabir said he had finished high school and entered university when the Taliban returned to power. His father then prevented him and his two sisters from studying, and this created a sense of hopelessness.

“Sometimes life becomes so dark and meaningless for me that I want to end my life with the gun that is from my father at home, but only my mother’s tears stop me,” Shabir said, speaking in Persian.