Banned from speaking in public, Afghan women tell us their stories
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Hi, it's Meghna here. We've got a very timely episode that we're digging up from the On Point archives. President Trump and Elon Musk's sweeping cuts to the federal bureaucracy under the name of Doge have upended many lives, not just here in the United States, but around the world as well. And now that includes 80 Afghan women who are studying in Oman.

They are graduate and postgraduate students on scholarships funded by the now shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development. At the end of February, the women were told that their scholarships were being terminated immediately and that they would be sent back to Afghanistan in two weeks. That means returning to a country under Taliban rule, where women are banned from universities and virtually all public life.

The State Department now says the scholarship funding will continue until the end of June. If it decides that the women's education is not in the U.S. national interest, then being forced to Afghanistan remains a very real and terrifying possibility for these 80 Afghan students.

Now, what life is like at the moment for women in Afghanistan under that very repressive Taliban rule is something that we explored in an episode of On Point back in September. A group of very brave Afghan women risked their lives, literally, to share their stories with us.

Just this week, that episode was honored with a National Gracie Award for Radio News Feature from the Alliance of Women in Media. And I have to say that the honor truly belongs to the women who took a considerable risk to talk to us. And that is why we believe this episode is well worth a listen, whether it's your first or second time. Imagine for a moment you're a young woman at home spending some time with a companion. You're sharing stories, enjoying each other's company.

And then you need to go out to do some errands. And as you approach the threshold of your door, you're saying to your companion, "Oh, that thing I was about to tell you, it's that..." But then you have to stop. Cut off. You have to go silent. Why? It's because you crossed a threshold into the outside world. And at that moment, when you cross the threshold from your home to the street,

Your voice was taken away from you because you are a woman. You are a woman living in Afghanistan. And by law, once you step outside, you are banned from speaking. You are not allowed to talk, sing, even laugh. You are nothing more than a ghost. This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty.

And that is the life that Mina is living right now in Kabul. Afghan women have been removed from the list of being human, being ranked from the list of being a human and worse than animals. They themselves were burned from the very existence of a woman.

Mina is not her real name. We granted her anonymity because in speaking with us, she risks extreme danger and punishment from the Taliban. They are thinking that I'm working with Americans. So my life is in danger. That's why I cannot go outside. Whenever I'm going outside, I'm covering my face. All the things that no one should know me.

Last month, August 21st, the Taliban's Justice Ministry instituted new so-called vice and virtue laws. When I heard the new laws on that day, they will be completely dark for me.

The Taliban's 114-page manifesto decrees that Afghan women now cannot leave their homes unless they're covered from head to toe and unless they are joined by a male guardian. They cannot look at men that are not related to them by blood or marriage. Women's voices are outlawed outside the home. They can't sing, read out loud, recite poetry, or even laugh.

And if they do speak in private or at home, it must be so quiet that others cannot hear them.

Whenever I'm thinking about the laws and the news that they are saying, I feel hot. My body is getting hot. My face is getting hot. I feel that someone is taking his or her hand in my neck and they want to kill me. I feel this much bad. They just want to silence us and trample our fate. Mina's life is a mere shadow of what it was even three years ago.

Then she was healthy, soon to be married, and had a job she loved working as a teacher at a private school in Kabul. I had a good salary. I was taking $18,000 per month. I was giving half of them for my family expenses, and half of them I was keeping for myself and taking my sisters outside, going to restaurants, going to some parks with my mom. We were enjoying our lives.

Mina was not alone. Millions of women in Afghanistan were doing well. Most girls were in school. More than a quarter of parliament was made up of women. Women were government ministers, judges, professors, and pilots.

But on August 15th, 2021, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, everything changed. I lost my life. I lost my job. I lost my dreams. I lost my thinking that I'm a human. I lost everything. My hope. Everything is lost. Under Taliban rule,

Women, including Mina, are banned from most jobs. They can't continue education after the sixth grade. They cannot leave their house without a male guardian. They cannot go to parks or play sports. So on that time, I cried a lot. And when I entered our home, I told my dad, Dad, why you're not raising your voice?

You are a man. You should go outside and you should fight for your daughters that we are uneducated. So if a woman or if a girl is uneducated, so how they should they should go for with their lives, how they should grow up the children because they are uneducated. Their eyes are closed from everything. They are past.

So I feel so bad whenever I stay alone. I am just thinking that why I am burned in Afghanistan, why I am Afghan, why the Taliban entered our country. It's long time that I feel depression. I'm staying in one room and always crying that what is our crime? Why they are just telling us to do this, to do that.

We are in their hand. We are like a doll and they are playing with us. Why they hate the woman that much? According to the Women, Peace and Security Index, Afghanistan has the worst ranking on women's rights in the world. And that's even before these latest restrictions were put into place.

The United Nations have called this situation in Afghanistan, quote, gender apartheid and, quote, an unprecedented deterioration of women's rights, end quote. Mina says it's brought an unprecedented period of darkness to the lives, minds and souls of Afghan women. All women are suffering from illness like depression, depression.

You know, mom, it's long time that I feel depression. I'm staying in one room and always crying that what is our time? Why they are just telling us to do this, to do that.

We are in their hand. We are like a doll and they are playing with us. Why do they hate the woman that much? So I didn't find anything. Always, always, I feel that I face mental health issues. And I know 100%, 100% of Afghan women faces depression and health issues.

The Taliban's morality police will use force to ensure women do not speak in public. Officers can now take or damage people's property or detain people for up to three days if the laws are broken. And although these laws do not apply to men, the men can be punished if their wives and daughters don't follow them.

So this is our situation. Think what I am suffering. I was born in 1989, and now if you see me, I look like a very old woman. Because every day I am thinking this, that what will happen next? I don't have any, any hope or dream for my future, for my kids and for my sisters. Living under such repression is breaking down Mina's body.

Recently, she lost feeling in most of the fingers on her right hand. She cannot write or hold anything heavy, not even a bag. She is constantly in pain. Her doctor told her it was a result of the high stress and anxiety she's enduring. It's all breaking her heart, and it's destroying her love for her country. If you ask a very small girl,

They will say, "I want to leave Afghanistan." You know, they are forcing them to wear scarves. They are five years old, they are four years old, they are forcing them to wear hijab. They are forcing them to wear their scarves. So it is very difficult.

I just hate Afghanistan now. It is very bad because this is my homeland. Because of them, I say this thing. Because of Taliban, I am saying. And I'm not afraid of them. I'm not afraid of them. I will rise my voice. If I can do something for all women, I will sacrifice myself for all women. And I am hoping every day I am praying that

When this time will finish, when it will finish, I cannot remember the good days that I have spent it. I don't remember. I cannot imagine the good days will come. Are you hopeful that things will change? Yes, I am trusting Allah that maybe it will change one day. Yeah, maybe it will change one day.

And I hope I pray every day. And what gives you that hope? In this situation, nothing, nothing will give me nothing, nothing. There is nothing. When I'm sleeping, I hope that in the morning when I when I open my eyes, when I wake up, so everything should be OK.

There should be freedom, no Taliban outside, nothing. There should be nothing. But when I open my eyes, I will say, oh, the same thing, the same thing. I'm just saying the same thing. That's it. I'm continuing my life. Do you want to stay in Afghanistan? No, no, no, no, no, never. I don't want to stay anymore. I don't want to stay. Mina lives in Kabul.

She spoke with On Point producer Paige Sutherland. And as we mentioned, we are not using Mina's real name because she faces considerable danger and punishment from the Taliban for risking speaking with us.

Well, we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk about exactly how and why the Taliban have put these restrictions into place, how women are enduring the new laws in their almost entirely erased lives, as you heard, and what, if anything, the international community can do about it. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.

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You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today I am asking you to imagine what your life would be like if any time you stepped outside of your own home, you were banned from speaking. That is the life that women in Afghanistan must live now. And today we're trying to understand how and why the Taliban instituted these new rules and what, if anything, the international community can do about it.

I'm joined now by Sahar Fetrat. She's a women's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. She was born in Afghanistan and lived in Iran and Pakistan as a young refugee during the first Taliban regime. She returned to Afghanistan in 2006 with her family, but then left again in 2018 in order to pursue higher education. She joins us today from London, England. Sahar, welcome. Thank you. I was trying to...

Rack my brain to think about if any other country in the world has the kinds of restrictions on women that Afghan women have to endure. And I couldn't think of any that have them to this degree. Can you? Not really, no. There is the situation that Afghan women and girls are facing by the Taliban and the level of misogyny is unmatched in the world right now.

Because it's impossible for me to think of any other place where women are simply not allowed to speak or even be seen or can travel, must travel only with a male guardian. Can you describe to me, we heard Mina describe what her life is like, but has the Taliban been able to really frighten people into fully complying with these restrictions? Yeah.

I mean, I just want to... You had a very powerful testimony from Mina where she described what it is about, that it is about this deep hate for women and this deep hatred. And hate has a name and it's called misogyny. And misogyny to the deepest level by the Taliban. The Taliban...

When they were in power in the past, for a little more than five years that they were in power, they showed their true self, their true face, the kind of erasure that we see that is happening in all aspects of women and girls' lives. It was happening in the past. They have done all these abuses in the past.

And the way they have run their rule is through creating fear. And that's how they send message to society. And I firmly believe that by limiting, by undermining, by abusing women and women's rights and women's bodies,

they send societal and moral messages to society. And I think it works for them because it creates fear and they work with the, you know, the Taliban's misogyny is working hand in hand with the already existing patriarchy that is in Afghanistan, which is absolutely limiting women's rights and women's life and freedom in every way possible. And maybe,

men are more submissive when it comes to rights and freedom because they look at the day-to-day rights and they feel like they have it

It's very short-sighted of them, but it's women who are not submissive. They're fighting back. They are sending their messages loud and clear. And they talk to the international community as well. And that's why they get more and more day-to-day kind of restrictions and abuses. Yes. And so we're going to talk more a little bit later in this hour about the bravery that Afghan women are showing right now. I'm glad you brought that up.

But regarding the men, as I mentioned earlier, and you just touched on this, that they can be imprisoned, face arrest, torture even, if they criticize the rules or if, you know, quote unquote, their women step out of line. Of course, women face even more dire consequences. Can you describe to me a little bit more, Sahar, about how much over the past few years life has changed for Afghan women? Because, I mean, the

Look, not being able, not being allowed to speak when you leave your home is just perhaps the most concrete and visceral kind of repression women are feeling. But it has been so much more than that. Can you describe some of the other changes? Yes, absolutely. You know, women in Afghanistan, you know,

like any, like women in any other country, they, uh, have different values, different backgrounds, different, you know, so it's not like, like a monolithic definition of who Afghan woman is. Um, but overall, all Afghan women, uh, are experiencing various forms of, uh, patriarchy and misogyny. And to the point that it comes to Taliban, it is, um,

the Taliban give men, they also abuse men, definitely you're very right, they abuse men in different ways.

but they give men more power to control women, which is what also patriarchy does as well. And this is the absolute control given to them. And if they don't, men who protest that or men who don't want to follow those orders, they face the consequences. So it's double pressure on men who don't want to follow misogynistic rules.

But for women, it's been very suffocating. It is when I talk to girls who are banned for more than three years from school, from secondary school, they tell me that we talk and they tell me how the situation is. And they have been impacted so much that in the middle of the talk, there is the conversation, there is a silence. And I hear them saying,

I hear them crying. I hear them feeling really miserable. And I feel miserable. And there is always a very miserable silence because I don't know what to do. And I don't know what we can promise. And for girls, they don't see any future for themselves. They see...

because their mothers or aunts or previous generation, they had an experience of this. So they know that this time it doesn't look like it will change like it did in the first rule of the Taliban. So it is absolutely suffocating for them. And, you know, just to add to this, there has been more than 100 protests

Edicts and orders to ban women from different aspects of life, from society in so many different ways. And as you mentioned, from using their voice and sexualizing and objectifying their voice to make it look like it's leading society towards sin.

And that's also one tool to further and further erase women from society. Sahar, can I just jump in here for a second? Because you said something important, because I'm absolutely certain that many people are wondering by what justification does the Taliban say women's voices are some kind of danger in public? Can you explain to me what the thinking is? So, yeah.

I mean, it's not surprising because for any other restrictions they have added, they don't have justification. The Taliban...

In this case, you know, they have, as I said earlier, they have this deep hatred towards women. And that is how it shows up in different ways. And when they use the Sharia law, and for example, the term they used for women's voices is that it's called al-rat. And al-rat in Islamic law,

it signifies a man or a woman's or a person's intimate parts, which must be covered. So you see how through this deep hate, they also objectify and sexualize women and they take their agency, their autonomy, their voice, their literal existence away by using different tools and different ways to...

keep them at home to imprison them. So the Taliban see even women's voices as some kind of dangerous, alluring siren song that could lead men towards sin. That's what you're saying. Yes, and that is the way they, in an egregious way, they sexualize women and they reduce them to toys, to things, to...

evilish or devilish kind of beings, not human beings.

Well, Sahar, stand by here for just a moment because I want to explore a little bit more sort of the evolution, if I can call it that, of what has happened under Taliban rule. And in order to do that, we spoke with Hayat Alvi, associate professor at the U.S. Naval College. And in speaking with us, she stressed to us that she is not speaking on behalf of the college or the United States government, but in her own personal capacity.

And Alvi said you have to take a much longer view of the advances and retreats of women's rights in Afghanistan and specifically beginning in 1979. Of course, Cold War and the Soviets that year invaded Afghanistan, hoping to spread communism. Saudi Arabia, she says, saw this as an opportunity.

An opportunity to spread Wahhabism, which is an ultra-Orthodox interpretation of Sunni Islam. And so what the Saudis did was set up Islamic seminaries along the Afghan-Pakistan border. There were freedom fighters or Mujahideen, which were trained in jihad against the Soviets. And part of that indoctrination involved Islam.

physical separation between males and females, including family members of the boys and men that later became the Taliban. And part of that indoctrination involved the mullahs or teachers in those seminaries teaching or indoctrinating these students, all males, that females are the source of temptation to sinful acts.

Now, Alvi says the story of Adam and Eve does exist in Islam, but the Islamic interpretation of that story does not see Eve as the original source of sin, as tempting Adam with the forbidden fruit of knowledge. But in these Islamic seminaries, Alvi says mullahs or teachers were spreading their own interpretations of Islam.

Bear in mind that these mullahs are not trained, are not educated, and a good number of them are highly illiterate. So they really don't know the essence of Islamic teachings in mainstream Islam. So that's where it's passed on from an illiterate mullah

to the Taliban in the indoctrination. In the mullahs' version of Islam, women are to be feared because they may lead men to temptation, specifically sexual acts outside of marriage. And the students...

Learning from the mullahs, we're being taught that the only way to avoid such temptation is to make women invisible. Because if she is rendered invisible, then the source of the temptation, the harmful thoughts, they refer to them as vices. Those will be diminished or reduced or minimized over time.

or rendered invisible. But that's the main source of that threat or fear. It's not just the act, it's what could lead to it. The thoughts, the temptations, the provocations in the emotions and the minds, the distraction, the mental distraction, the sexual distraction. That's what the Taliban have thought about when they made those policies.

Now, it's important to note that, as we've said, in 1979, the Soviets invade Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia sees that as an opportunity to spread Wahhabism. But eventually, the Soviets had to withdraw from Afghanistan because the Mujahideen kicked them out with the help of the United States. And that is what allowed the Taliban to take power. So ever since 1979,

These seminaries along the Afghan-Pakistan border were teaching the Taliban two things, how to be a jihadist and why they should fear women.

And as Professor Alvi puts it, the fight against the Taliban in the long run in Afghanistan has always been about a battle over education. It became a race between the Western supported schools being built in Afghanistan and a race against the Taliban schools being built where they indoctrinated boys in the Taliban ideology.

Guess who was winning? It was the Taliban. So it's a battle of education. It's the battle of schools. You learn at a very young age how to treat others and whether or not to tolerate others' views and beliefs. And if the Taliban continue to win in that race of schools and the battle of education,

then all is lost. Hayat Alvi is an associate professor at the U.S. Naval College. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point. I want to bring Shabana Bazij-Rasik into the program now. She's founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan, or SOLA. She was born and raised in Kabul. Shabana, welcome back to On Point.

Thank you, Magnite. It's nice to be back. Now, I do want to speak with both you and Sahar about causes for hope or what the international community can do, and we will do that in a moment. But since you have dedicated your life, Shabana, to the education and mental liberation of Afghan women, I do first want to hear your thoughts about these new edicts that women in Afghanistan have to try to survive under.

Well, hearing Mina's account of what life is like under Afghanistan is absolutely heartbreaking and devastating. And as Sahar was talking about her conversations with Afghan girls and women today in Afghanistan and listening to what Mina was talking about, but also even without being able to pinpoint why she's hopeful about

I couldn't help but to think back to what has been the consistent thread in all of this is the historic bravery of Afghan women. They have never given up on themselves, on girls, and on a brighter future for all Afghans. And that was true when I was growing up under the Taliban regime.

I was a beneficiary of that bravery of Afghan women. I was able to sneak into homes of Afghan women who were secretly educating girls at that time. And I see that today. In the past three years, we have seen girls and women being that consistent voice against Taliban's misogyny.

calling out their un-Islamic decrees against women and not giving up on themselves and their rights and the rights of other women. So that is what keeps me and so many Afghan women who are fighting for a different Afghanistan, for a brighter Afghanistan going.

Well, Shabana and Sahar, stand by for a moment. When we come back, I want to talk with you and learn from both of you more about what, if anything, the international community can do to assist those very brave Afghan women that both of you have very rightly talked about. So that's in a moment. This is On Point. Still getting around to that fix on your car? You got this. On eBay, you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit. Doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair or your first time swapping your windshield wipers.

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You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and today we're talking about the lives of women in Afghanistan. Their rights have been rapidly deteriorating since the Taliban took over, once again, a couple of years ago. And now the Taliban have decreed that even women's voices are outlawed in public.

So what can the international community do? Well, I'm joined today by Shabana Basi-Jurassik. She's founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan, or SOLA. She was born and raised in Kabul. And by the way, we have spoke, we a while ago did a show with Shabana. She graced us with an interview telling us the story about how she founded SOLA, had to escape Afghanistan and continued her work in Rwanda. And Shabana, I want to hear from you a little bit more later about that.

how Seoul is reaching back to women in Afghanistan, even under these circumstances. But that will be in just a second. And we're also joined today by Sahar Fetrat. She is a women's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. And both of you have pointed out that even under these extraordinarily repressive rules,

I still can't quite get over the painful irony that Mina was actually able to speak to millions of Americans by taking the risk of talking with our producer, Paige. And she can't even say what she said on our radio show today outside of her own home. That is bravery. And many other Afghanistan women have been showing the same amount of bravery. They can't speak in public, so they have been taking to social media, taking to the internet to record themselves speaking.

singing, reading, speaking, basically showing that in protest. So, for example, here's a clip from a video from X, a.k.a. Twitter, that an Afghan woman posted of herself and others singing a poem in their native language while playing the tambourine. Shabana, even in doing this, those women are taking a risk, right? And yet so many women are carving out

They're carving out a space for them to protest, to self-educate. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that relates to the work that Sola has been doing recently?

Yes. For those who don't know where Sola is right now, we are the only legally operating boarding school for F1 girls and currently in Rwanda. And I speak with women and girls very, very often. In fact, right now we are in the midst of reshaping.

reviewing 3,500 applications that we have received for 30 spots in our incoming class of students who will join us in Rwanda shortly. And these are Afghan girls from all over the world. These are Afghan girls who understand that their education and their future is what matters. And that is going to be a future not just for themselves, but for Afghanistan.

So this is exactly what I was talking about. Earlier, I heard a reference that the Taliban hate women. I don't believe that to be the case. I do believe that they fear women. I do believe that the long game to ending Taliban and that

kind of ideology in Afghanistan is what women are doing. It's the women's movement. It is investment in girls' education. It is not giving up

up on the rights of girls. And inside Afghanistan, there are girls, women, and there are male allies who continue educating girls despite this incredible oppression that Taliban are imposing on the population. I understand also that you have...

online as well and that girls are able to access that in Afghanistan? Correct. So since we arrived in Rwanda, there are three focus areas for us in looking at. We are working towards a future where we can go back to Afghanistan. When we were forced to leave in August of 2021, we were in the midst of building a

a campus in Kabul that would accommodate educating girls from all over Afghanistan. We had students from 28 of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan at that time. And so when we arrived in Rwanda, we focused on what is next now that we are the only legally operating boarding school for Afghan girls? What can we do?

to fight Taliban in the long run? What can we do to make sure that we don't submit to Taliban's version of what Afghanistan should be like? And we landed in three areas, knowing the demand that we receive in the form of application every year from Afghan girls. The first one is we create permanence in Rwanda. We are now in the midst of

building a campus that is not only going to be a boarding school, but a home for Afghan girls. In the summertime, Sola is now home to a lot of Afghan girls who are studying in colleges and universities and schools across the world, and they cannot go home to Afghanistan to be with their families. And we're starting to welcome them to Sola, to be with other Afghan girls, to be in a sisterhood

of educated Afghan girls and to be reminded that they do have a home and that they are working towards a future together. So that building that campus, that home for us is really critical and we're well underway with that. The second thing is I mentioned we can't bring the thousands of girls who send us an application. We can very painfully only take a handful of them to bring them to Sola in Rwanda.

So how do we bring Sola to them? Less than six months ago, at the end of March 2024, we launched Sola X, a WhatsApp-based online academy. And our goal for first year was to reach

10 000 learners on our platform less than six months we have more than 12 000 learners from every single province inside afghanistan all 34 and across 40 different countries um this is curriculum that is geared towards avon girls at the moment we have

English classes on the platform and a course that we have developed in partnership with National Geographic on storytelling for impact, because we do believe that the stories and the voices of Afghan girls matter, that they are the agents who can document history for themselves and for Afghanistan.

And we are weeks away from launching seventh grade Afghan curriculum in Dari and Pashto. And how that works is it's very basic. It's free for every user. All an Afghan girl needs to have is access to a basic smartphone and the ability to be able to text via WhatsApp messages.

Um, the Sola X chatbot speaks in three languages in Dari, Pashto and English, and the lessons are delivered, um, in 30 minute segments and it's asynchronous. Yeah. Um, a family who has, uh, one basic smartphone, but let's say five children, they can use five different service numbers for Sola X, um, to enroll all of them in, in the, um, classes. And we are rolling out, um,

It's remarkable, truly remarkable work that Sola is doing, Shabana. I only pray that the Taliban don't take those phones away.

But I keep coming back to the fact that this isn't just a sudden happening, right? I mean, we are talking about a very long history of, as I said, the advance and retreat of women's rights in Afghanistan. And I mean, there are women in Afghanistan alive today who remember how prior to 1979, Afghanistan was an incredibly cosmopolitan place. Kabul was incredibly modern. But women alive there today remember that.

And so I keep thinking about, in a sense, the complicity of the international community, including the United States, as I mentioned before, the support of the Mujahideen simply as an anti-communist tool, right, to kick the Soviets out, which then led to the Taliban, which, of course, washed back on the United States in the form of 9-11. And so, therefore, we must ask, and Sahar, I'm going to turn to you on this one, what can the international community do? And this is a question that Mina...

when we spoke with her, really, really emphasized to us. And I just want to let her once again have her say. This is something that I'm telling you from my heart. Now I'm about to cry. I'm about to yell that no one is listening to our voice. Why? Where are the human rights? Why they are not doing something for us?

why they are not helping the girls, why they are not helping the women, we are suffering a very bad situation, very bad situation. People in foreign countries, they are thinking that everything is okay. Now they are saying that no bomb blasts, no fighting, nothing. It is worse than before.

So, Sahar, you have written for Human Rights Watch that what the Taliban are doing to women in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity, a crime of gender persecution. And that in and of itself could give the international community tools to somehow bring the Taliban to account.

Yes, Magnet. Before that, I just wanted to reflect on what Mina said and as you said as well, that Afghanistan is in this mess right now.

And not by itself alone. And there are many stakeholders, many people, many countries responsible for this. And to trying to get Afghanistan out of this situation, it shouldn't be only on the backs and shoulders of Afghan women and girls. That's why...

We need to look at how throughout these new restrictions and all these laws that could be, you know, crimes against humanity of gender persecution, they did not.

came out of a vacuum. They didn't just appear like that. In the past three years, I think the Taliban tasted the waters and over time they got more and more, found more audacity and more emboldened to abuse women and girls in ways that are even hard to imagine. And, you know, for that, I think what a human international community could do

Here's a few suggestions that I will share with you. Government leaders should demand that Afghan women should be invited to all international meetings regarding Afghanistan and Afghanistan's future. And we can see that Doha 3, where Afghan women were not invited to appease the Taliban, was a disaster.

And it actually, in many ways, involved in the Taliban to further marginalize Afghan women and came up with their gazette and their new laws. I believe it's very much connected and interconnected with that. Forgive me for a second, Sahar, because I simply have to say I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is on point. So then you also talk about that there is international law that you think that the International Criminal Court could go to or the International Court of Justice. Yes.

Yes, they're both options. Governments can work together to use international law and institutions to pressure the Taliban. And as you mentioned, they can support the International Criminal Court's persecution of the Taliban leaders for committing the crime against humanity of gender persecution. But also, which is the news that we have from this week, September 25th, we heard about...

the possibility of taking a case against the Taliban for failing to abide the UN Convention on Women's Rights, which is CEDA, to the International Court of Justice. Canada, Australia, Germany and Netherlands are actually now, they announced that they're taking the Taliban to ICJ over the crime of gender discrimination.

This is a positive move and very important. At the same time, the countries can seriously consider including gender apartheid as a crime against humanity in the proposed Crimes Against Humanity Treaty.

And we can see that there's already demand and request from Afghan women. There is an important campaign ongoing about the recognition of gender apartheid. So countries could do much more to support Afghan women and taking the Taliban to international courts for their crimes. Uh-huh.

So Shabana, then let me turn to you because the international community, a.k.a. through diplomacy or something like the ICC, could act, but countries only act when pushed by their own people. So I'm wondering if you think that there's anything that even individuals listening today could do. Yeah.

Well, I do want to add one more idea or recommendation to what Sahar said, which I think is really critical. And that is looking at what will work, the pressure points that will work on groups like Taliban is really appealing to the Muslim majority countries and nations to condemn them.

Taliban's un-Islamic decrees and ruling. That is what they cannot avoid. We talked earlier about Saudi Arabia's efforts and how that contributed to the creation of Taliban.

we can go back to actors as powerful and as influential as Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, et cetera, and ask them questions.

consistently demanding not just the governments but civil society organizations and leaders in those countries, women leaders in particular, to raise their voices. And then, you know, outside of that, coming to individuals. I do believe that the most powerful actors in any society are people, people who are listening right now.

And we can't just feel hopeless and feel sad for people in Afghanistan. What we do at Sola, for instance, shouldn't be just celebrated as this extraordinary effort. It is, but it shouldn't be.

Educating girls should be the most ordinary act. And how do we get to that place? We cannot look away. We have already seen what happens when we have looked away from what's happening in Afghanistan in the past. So we cannot. I look at this not as a situation that should disturb girls and women in Afghanistan, but should disturb society.

every human being. We should not, as women in 2024, have an example anywhere in the world

for little girls today to say, you are lucky you're going to school. Guess what? Girls in Afghanistan are not allowed to go to school. That should never be said to any child. Well, Shabana Basij-Rasik, founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan, or SOLA, thank you so very much. And Sahar Fetrat at Human Rights Watch, thank you. Your voices and Mina's voice are deeply appreciated. This is On Point.