The Taliban’s relentless repression of women is creating a silent crisis, one that is pushing many young Afghan women to the brink. Shaimaa is calling on the international community to act before more lives are lost.
The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.
Azar Shaimaa sits in grief, her voice trembling with sorrow as she recounts the devastating loss of her daughter, Benazir. A bright ninth-grade student, Benazir took her own life. Just three years earlier, Shaimaa lost her husband in a car accident.
Shaimaa now lives in a rented house in Kabul with her other surviving daughter. Forced out of her job as a high school teacher by the Taliban and without her husband as the sole breadwinner, Shaimaa has now been financially supported by her brother.
As she recounted the circumstances leading to Benazir, her daughter’s death, Azar Shaimaa could not hold back tears, and her voice was choking with resentment. She traced the root cause of Benazir cutting her own life short to the harsh and oppressive environment for women engendered by Taliban rule after they seized back power four years ago.
Ironically, the day we sat for the interview the Taliban had just published a new decree closing down medical institutions for girls – yet another nail in the coffin of women’s freedom. The medical institutions up to that point were the only ones left open to girls who wanted to continue their studies in medicine and midwifery.
“For women and girls in Afghanistan, life is like a prison,” Shaimaa says. “It has no meaning.”
A Systematic Erasure of Women’s Rights
Since regaining power four years ago, the Taliban have imposed a series of draconian decrees that have systematically erased women from public life. Girls are banned from secondary and higher education, women are barred from most forms of employment, and even simple freedoms—like visiting parks or speaking loudly in public—have been stripped away.
The consequences have been devastating. Many Afghan women and girls are battling severe mental health issues, with some taking their own lives, others disappearing into Taliban prisons, and those with the means fleeing the country.
The death of Azar Shaimaa’s daughter, Benazir, encapsulates the dire situation facing women in Afghanistan.
During eight years of marriage, Shaimaa said, God gifted her two daughters who she “raised with thousands of hopes and dreams”. She enrolled them at school, and they were both eager to learn, largely motivated by the fact she was herself a high school teacher. Benazir was the top student in her school from first to the ninth grade.
“She really wanted to complete her higher education at the Medical University hoping to specialize in surgery in order to serve her family and the people of her country,” Shaimaa boasts of her daughter.
“The day the republican government fell was a dark day for the women and girls of Afghanistan, and the darkness has continued until today”, Shaimaa tearfully laments. Shortly after assuming power in Kabul, the Taliban promptly banned girls from going to school until further notice. It greatly shocked her daughter, Benazir.
“She would wake up each morning counting down the minutes to the day schools would open for her to return”. “She would ask me, mother when will the Taliban open girl’s school again?” recounts Shaimaa.
A Desperate Struggle Against Despair
As months passed with no change, Benazir’s mental health deteriorated. Benazir became deeply worried about her future that she began show symptoms of mental decline. She would talk to herself for many days, her mother says. At a psychologist’s recommendation, Shaimaa enrolled her in a sewing center to keep her engaged, but it was no substitute for her true passion.
Benazir lasted only one week at the sewing centre, returning one day to declare that “Mom, I don’t feel like going to the sewing center anymore; I want to study”. It didn’t work because Benazir was solely focused on her education and achieving her dream in the future. She was waiting for the schools to reopen.
Unfortunately, one day everything boiled over. Shaimaa returned from the funeral of a relative to loud noises and people gathered around her house. She saw her daughter covered in blood. She had cut her wrists open with a razor blade.
”My daughter ended her life and left this world with a heart full of unfulfilled desires”, says Shaimaa mournfully.
“In spite of all the care and attention I gave her, I was unable to save her life, and I lost my daughter”.
A Call for International Action
The Taliban’s relentless repression of women is creating a silent crisis, one that is pushing many young Afghan women to the brink. Shaimaa is calling on the international community to act before more lives are lost.
Image: Young women in Afghanistan face despair as the Taliban’s education ban crushes their dreams, leaving them with little hope for the future. Credit: Learning Together.
This piece has been sourced from Inter Press Service.
