“How can it be possible for me as a woman who has worked so hard and tried to learn and advance, to now have to hide myself and stay at home?” Afghan women fear the Taliban will impose their fundamentalist view of Islam and all but end women's rights.
KABUL, Afghanistan — It was early evening and Zahra, her mother and three sisters were on their way to dinner at another sister’s home when they saw people running and heard gunshots on the street.In just a few minutes, everything changed for the 26-year-old resident of Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.
Amid a lightning offensive over the past several days, the Taliban now control more than two-thirds of the country, just two weeks before the U.S. plans to withdraw its last troops. And they are slowly closing in on the capital, Kabul. There have been no confirmed reports of such extreme measures in areas the Taliban fighters recently seized. But militants were reported to have taken over some houses and set fire to at least one school.
Her eyes welled up with tears as she considered the possibility that she will not be able to return to work; that her 12-year-old sister will be unable to continue going to school ; that her older brother will not be able play football; or that she won’t be able to freely play the guitar again. The instrument hung on a wall behind her as she spoke.
“You can’t uneducate millions of people,” she said. If women “are back behind walls and not able to go out as much, at least they can now educate their cousins and their neighbors and their own children in ways that couldn’t happen 25 years ago.”
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