AFGHAN WOMEN fear future with Taliban.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Hunkering indoors and watching her country fall to the Taliban, one young woman in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul described Sunday the anxiety, fears and dashed hopes her generation feels as embassies evacuate staff and the government all but crumbles.
But the day wasn’t supposed to be like this. In the morning, Aisha Khurram made her way to Kabul University, where she is just two months shy of graduation. Before she could reach her class, the 22-year-old was turned back and told to head home.
Life in the capital of 6 million people rapidly deteriorated Sunday, just as it had across much of the country over the past several weeks amid a Taliban blitz that saw the group capture one provincial capital after another. Already, Kabul’s parks were filling with displaced people — families who’d fled their homes as the Taliban seized control of their towns and targeted people.
Khurram, 22, said female students who’d made it to Kabul University early Sunday were told goodbye by their professors, who said they were unsure if the girls would be allowed to return and unsure, if classes resumed, that boys and girls would be allowed to study together.
“The future is at stake. Our lives are at stake,” she said, speaking from her home in Kabul. Electricity in her neighborhood had been out all day as she spoke to The Associated Press over her mobile phone.
She’d hoped to serve her country after graduation, having spent the past several years studying international relations, working as a human rights defender, volunteering and even speaking at the United Nations.
“Everything I did was for a vision and the future,” she said.
“The fight for our rights, the things we advocated for during the peace process, they are taking the backseat,” Khurram said. “The only thing people are thinking about is how to survive here or how to escape.”
But for her and millions of others of Afghans, there is no way out. With land borders closed, visa costs out of reach for most and embassies shuttering, there’s a feeling that “everybody turned their back on the Afghan people.”
“Neither government, nor Taliban — none of them represent us,” she said. “The only thing we have is our God.”
Although no fighting has yet broken out in Kabul, the sound of sporadic gunfire could be heard throughout the day. Men carrying the white and black flag of the Taliban were seen walking through the city’s empty streets. Residents clamored indoors following a morning rush on ATMs to withdraw savings. Some rushed to the main airport to catch flights out.
U.S. military helicopters circled overhead, evacuating personnel from the U.S. Embassy as staff destroyed important documents.
Khurram had just one word when asked to describe her feeling as Western embassies emptied: “Betrayal.”
She said she believed in the prospects of U.S.-backed peace talks that had been unfolding between the government, Taliban and others in Qatar. She’d advocated strongly for the inclusion of diverse voices in those talks aimed at mapping out Afghanistan’s future.
As the Taliban push deeper into Kabul, she said it’s clear to her the U.S. used those talks as cover for its withdrawal.
“Right now I feel naive,” Khummar said. “I’m very much sorry for my generation and myself for trusting them.”
WHAT HAPPENS NOW
Wahida Sadeqi, a 17-yearold high school student in Kabul, worries that she now will not be allowed to graduate.
She, like many Afghan civilians in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal and before a Taliban victory, keeps asking the same question: What will happen to me?
The U.S. withdrawal, which effectively ends the longest war on foreign soil in U.S. history, is also likely to be the start of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan’s people.
“I am so worried about my future. It seems so murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity,” said Sadeqi, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. “It is about my existence. It is not about their withdrawal. I was born in 2004, and I have no idea what the Taliban did to women, but I know women were banned from everything.”
Uncertainty hangs over virtually every facet of life in Afghanistan. It is unclear what the future holds and whether the fighting will ever stop. For two decades, American leaders have pledged peace, prosperity, democracy, the end of terrorism, and rights for women.
Few of those promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans leave.
The Taliban, the extremist group that once controlled most of the country and continues to fight the government, insist that the elected president step down. Militias are increasing in prominence and power, and there is talk of a lengthy civil war.
Over two decades, the U.S. mission evolved from hunting terrorists to helping the government build the institutions of a functioning government, dismantle the Taliban and empower women. But the U.S. and Afghan militaries were never able to effectively destroy the Taliban, who sought refuge in Pakistan, allowing the insurgents to stage a comeback.
The Taliban never recognized Afghanistan’s democratic government. And they appear closer than ever to achieving the goal of their insurgency: to return to power and establish a government based on their extremist view of Islam.
Women would be most at risk under Taliban rule. When the group controlled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, it barred women from taking most jobs or receiving educations and practically made them prisoners in their own homes — though this was already custom for many women in rural parts of the country.
“It is too early to comment on the subject. We need to know much more,” Fatima Gailani, an Afghan government negotiator who is involved in the continuing peace talks with the Taliban, said in April. “One thing is certain: It is about time that we learn how to rely on ourselves. Women of Afghanistan are totally different now. They are a force in our country; no one can deny them their rights or status.”