While the
Taliban’s brief rule of Kunduz is over, their invasion may have dismantled the
city’s women’s rights network
Within
hours of capturing the city in northern Afghanistan, the
Taliban recruited young children, asking them to point out the houses of
government employees, NGO workers and especially women's rights activists.
“The
Taliban had a hit list of female activists,” said Ms Rustami, head of the
Kunduz Women and Youth for Peace NGO, a women’s rights organisation, which
included her name alongside “almost every active working woman in Kunduz.”
Four
armed men later arrived at Ms Rustami’s home, their faces covered and eyes
lined in kohl, and demanded her father hand her over.
By
then, Ms Rustami had already fled Kunduz with other female activists, weaving
through the city’s backstreets on foot, their identities concealed by burkas.
They paid a sympathetic driver to take them to a nearby safe district, crammed
in a small car with their children, only to be stopped at a Taliban checkpoint.
The
militants ordered that any woman who worked should come forward. The driver,
risking his own life, lied and said he was only transporting housewives.
“We
were completely paralysed with fear,” said Ms Rustami. “I thought this was the
end.”
Last
week, Taliban
fighters retreated from Kunduz, ending a 15-day occupation of
the northern Afghan provincial capital.
They
left a city devastated. At least 57 civilians and Afghan security forces were
killed and 630 wounded. Many of
those died at the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital, which
was repeatedly pummeled by US air strikes, an incident the MSF has labelled a possible
war crime.
Across
the city, buildings were burned to the ground. NGO offices, government buildings
and local shops were looted and walls are pockmarked from bullets.
As Afghan security forces regained control of the city, some of
the estimated 20,000 families that fled the violence have slowly begun to
return.
Afghan special forces arrive at the airport as they launch a
counteroffensive to retake Kunduz from Taliban insurgents Photo: NASIR
WAQIF/AFP/Getty Images
But women’s rights and civil society activists who, like Ms
Rustami, were methodically hunted by armed militants, say they will never feel
safe in the city ever again.
During the Taliban’s five-year rule in Afghanistan, almost every
imaginable restriction was imposed on women, including a ban on girls’
education after the age of eight. Women were barred from leaving their home,
unless accompanied by a male relative.
In recent months, as peace talks between Afghanistan and the
Taliban inched forward, some believed the Taliban may had softened their
hardline policies towards women.
In an informal meeting in June in Oslo, Taliban representatives
met with an Afghan female delegation, and reportedly discussed women’s rights
to education and work.
That the Taliban had even agreed to discuss such issues directly
with Afghan women was considered a groundbreaking event.
But the women targeted in Kunduz say the Taliban’s actions during their
occupation of the city demonstrate
the group remains committed to their fundamentalist principles.
“They
haven’t changed one bit,” said Hassina Sarwari, director for the Kunduz branch
of Women for Afghan Women, an NGO that hosted the city’s sole women’s shelter.
“They set fire to our office, they looted our homes, they
stalked us,” she said. “When the Taliban meet with women in an international
setting they don’t have the power to hurt us. But in Afghanistan, as you have
seen this week, they’re wild.”
In a number of interviews with Afghan women from Kunduz,
including civil society activists, lawyers, and human rights defenders, all
presented the same harrowing testimony: they were hunted, they were threatened,
and they were lucky to escape alive.
Some of the most horrific allegations from Kunduz – that the
Taliban gang raped female students living at the university dormitory, and
female inmates at the local prison – are yet to be proven.
The Taliban angrily denied the rapes, and have since threatened
the local television networks that reported the allegations with retribution.
Dr Farida Moman, Afghanistan’s minister for higher education, also labelled
these specific events as false.
But Ms Sarwari said she spoke to one young female rape victim
from Kunduz who was referred to her by local authorities. Others may not come
forward because of the cultural shame in Afghanistan associated with being
raped, she said.
While the Taliban’s brief rule of Kunduz is over and the clean
up of the city under way, the lasting legacy of their invasion may ultimately
prove to be the dismantlement of the city’s women’s rights network.
A Taliban fighter talks with residents in Kunduz's main square,
a day after insurgents took control
Photo: Reuters
Muslima Wajawi, director for Peace Windows for Afghan Women, had
worked in Kunduz to advance women’s rights since 2002. But after the events of
the past two weeks, she feels she can never return to Kunduz. Even in Kabul,
she says she is unsafe.
Shortly after her escape from Kunduz, Ms Wajawi was interviewed
on local television about her ordeal. Within hours, a man identifying himself
as Taliban called her mobile phone.
“He said ‘when you come back to Kunduz, we’ll find you’,” she
said. “Then he taunted me, saying, actually, stay in Kabul, we’ll find you
anyway.”
Ms Wajawi, like many other Afghan women’s rights defenders, has
received threats throughout her career. Ominous phone calls, texts, and letters
demanding female activists cease their work in Afghanistan are disturbingly routine.
But the events of Kunduz seem to have finally taken their toll.
“I’ve spent my life committed to women’s rights and advancement,” she said.
“But I’m a mother. I have to protect my children first.”
Fawzia Koofi, a prominent female Afghan MP who has also faced
numerous threats, said she feared the recent events would discourage activists
not just in Kunduz, but throughout Afghanistan, to continue their fight for
women’s rights.
Nevertheless, she said, it was now more important than ever to
continue their work. “When times are difficult it is when we are most needed to
raise our voices,” Ms Koofi said. “I know these women risk their lives, but
that’s what we do. We can’t stop.”
