Arzo is so weak that she spends most of her day lying on a thin mattress in a poorly lit room, breathing the stale air of Pakistan’s biggest city through a ceiling fan.
She passes the time by watching beauty videos on her phone, the screen’s glow illuminating the faded freckles of a teen whose skin now gets little exposure to sunlight.
Arzo was smuggled across the border for medical treatment, but she was a long way from her home in Afghanistan, where she lived with her parents.
Ahamad and Mahsa, her elder brother and sister, are currently taking care of her in a rented room in Karachi, where they are temporarily seeking safety from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Ahamad whispers, “Don’t worry,” while kissing Arzo’s hand”You’ll be alright. We are always here for you, so don’t worry. I’m hoping you’ll be alright shortly.
Because Arzo and her siblings fear retaliation from the Taliban and being exposed by Pakistani authorities, who have deported over 26,000 Afghans since declaring a crackdown on undocumented migrants in October, CNN is not revealing their true names.
The 15-year-old’s siblings claim that if she were to be forcibly returned to Afghanistan, she would almost certainly die because she requires medical attention that isn’t available in their own nation.
Because they don’t want to upset their younger sister, the siblings don’t typically discuss the reason behind her extreme illness. Arzo had been crying silently as they told CNN their story.
Arzo and her sisters dance to pop music while wearing jeans and going barefoot inside an Afghani home. She grins and moves her hands to the rhythm of the music.
According to Ahamad, the video was shot six months after the Taliban took over the nation in August 2021. Although the schools were closed, his sisters were optimistic that they would reopen.
No, they didn’t. Instead, in spite of promises to the contrary, the Taliban progressively reinstated the oppressive laws that had reduced the status of women in society during their previous rule, which lasted from 1996 to 2001.
Most workplaces, colleges, national parks, fitness centers, and public places without a male chaperone are off-limits to women.
Furthermore, girls are not taught past the sixth grade anymore.
Arzo was still three years ahead of Mahsa, who had already completed her high school education.
Their father, concerned that their village school would close, sent his daughters to an education centre in Kabul to study English, but that too would soon close.
Mahsa started tailoring as a way to kill time when she got home. Arzo’s depression, however, grew more profound.
Mahsa recalled Arzo as saying, “Most of the time she said, ‘I hope we should move from this place, I don’t want to be here, there is no education and I want to become a doctor.'”
When Mahsa came downstairs one July day, her sister’s bulging eyes were fixed on her.
“‘What happened to you?’ I asked. She admitted to drinking acid. Mahsa remarked, “I didn’t believe it, so I put my fingers in her mouth and she threw up blood.”
Physicians report a rise in suicides.
Experts claim that accurate data on suicide and suicide attempts are not gathered in Afghanistan, but doctors and rights organisations claim that under Taliban rule, there has been a rise in suicides.
In the western Herat province of Afghanistan, Dr. Shikib Ahmadi has been seeing patients at a mental health clinic six days a week, for longer hours than before. He fears he will be punished by the Taliban for speaking to foreign media, which is why he is using a pseudonym.
Since the Taliban took control of the facility two years ago, Ahmadi said, the proportion of female patients has increased by 40% to 50%. He said that about 10% of those patients commit suicide.
Girls and women, whose lives are restricted by the Taliban, are attempting suicide with inexpensive household items, he claimed. Anything that will help them cope with their loss, including liquid chemicals, rat poison, cleaning solutions, and fertilizer for farming.
I don’t think anyone in this country has a bright future.
According to Ahmadi, he makes an effort to reassure them that things will get better, that classes will resume, and that they can work from home while they wait, creating things or engaging in other meaningful activities.
In actuality, though, he has no idea when classes will start back up, and his own hope is dwindling.
He declared, “I don’t see any good future for anyone in this country.”
Another group of girls recently completed their education under the Taliban regime by graduating from sixth grade.
Ahmadi worries that this will lead to an increase in suicide and self-harm.
Everyone hoped that the schools would be open the following year, as they did last year. He stated, “The government has pledged to open the schools.
However, since the schools are closed this year, people’s hopes have been dashed. It seems to me that there will be more suicides.
In response to reports of an increase in female suicides, CNN has reached out to the Taliban for comments.
The Taliban asserted that since taking power, the number of female suicides has decreased in a statement given in January to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“By the grace of Allah, we do not have such cases now. There were many cases (sic) of women committing suicide in the last 20 years,” the statement read.
The UN experts, who stated in July that “reports of depression and suicide are widespread, especially among adolescent girls prevented from pursuing education,” are among the numerous reports that refute the claim.
The coming back of the Taliban
Arzo was born in 2008, which was seven years after the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban leaders they believed were supporting the terrorists from al Qaeda responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Even though a terrible civil war raged for years in Afghanistan under the government supported by the West, conditions for Afghan women had improved. Many went to school, graduated, and developed into positive role models for girls, including Mahsa and Arzo.
However, everything changed in 2021 when the United States and its allies began to withdraw from Afghanistan, making room for the Taliban fighters, who had fled to the country’s rural areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, to make a comeback.
Rights groups claim that once the Taliban regained control of the cities, they reinstated their extreme Islamist beliefs, carrying out arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, and unlawful detentions of anyone deemed a threat to their leadership.
Women were first instructed to stay at home in the chaotic wake of the takeover because the fighters were “not trained” to respect them. Millions of women and girls are essentially confined to their homes under the threat of punishment after restrictions were gradually tightened.
St. George’s University of London associate professor of global health humanities Ayesha Ahmad was interviewing Afghani women who had left abusive marriages after the Taliban took over in-depth.
“They knew what the reality would be, and they were right,” she said, adding, “I will never forget the day of the takeover, the frantic calls and communications, and the absolute terror that they were feeling.”
She stated that despite the shame and stigma that suicide would bring upon their families, many more women are now at risk of violence, and some believe that suicide is their only option.
“In this environment of religious extremism, women will not be seen as victims, as suicide is a sin in Islam,” said the woman.
The Taliban leaders who caused this predicament have shown little remorse, so Afghan women are turning abroad for assistance.
According to Heather Barr, associate director of Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights division, Afghan women fear that the outside world is starting to acknowledge that what is happening to them is normal.
“Everyone is sort of dismissing it and putting it down to Afghanistan. We should all find it intolerable. Because what occurs in Afghanistan and the response—or lack thereof—from the international community has far-reaching effects on women’s rights throughout the world, the speaker stated.
“We must communicate to our governments that this is unacceptable. This is not a nation with a domestic problem that can be ignored.
“I weep for her prospects.”
When his sister drank the acid in July, Ahamad wasn’t in Afghanistan.
He had already left for Pakistan, fearing that the Taliban would exact revenge on him for his journalistic work prior to their takeover. He told CNN that Arzo was seen by his father and uncle at a nearby doctor, who prescribed some medication and advised them to travel to Kabul in case Arzo’s condition worsened. Yes, it did.
Her stomach and oesophagus had been damaged by the acid, according to a doctor in Kabul, and surgery was unlikely to save her life. They therefore made the decision to send her to Pakistan, where a doctor and Ahamad were waiting. Arzo was then driven to Karachi by Ahamad, where a different medical professional placed a feeding tube in her stomach.
It was three months prior to that. Arzo has reportedly lost weight ever since, according to Ahamad, and is currently weighing roughly 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds.
“She is not in a good situation at all. In order for her to gain weight and be prepared for the actual procedure, the doctors placed a feeding tube in her stomach, according to Ahamad’s January statement.
He remarked, “Maybe she won’t gain weight.” “And perhaps they won’t perform the surgery.”
Mahsa is sitting on the bed, her needle puncturing the fabric with just enough accuracy to keep her concentration on the work at hand. Although she would like to go back to school, taking care of her sister comes first for the time being.
Mahsa remarked, “I can’t sleep at night because she is in pain.”
The siblings are aware of the great risk they are taking when they speak out because they are worried about the Taliban’s influence in Pakistan and for their parents, who are still in Afghanistan.
They are, however, in a desperate situation.
The siblings claim that none of them can work, and they lack the $5,000 required for Arzo’s surgery in addition to funds for the room, their own food, and the cans of juice and powdered milk they need to keep her weight from falling.
They don’t want to consider what would happen if they ran out of money or if the Pakistani authorities showed up at their house.
Nearly 400,000 undocumented Afghans have returned to their home country since October, when Pakistan’s government declared it would no longer tolerate their presence, as per the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
According to a joint statement from UN agencies, the majority departed willingly, driven away by fear of being arrested.
The UN Office on Human Rights (OCHR) warned that individuals who returned would be in “grave risk of human rights violations” and urged Pakistan to stop the removals in October.
Spokesman Ravina Shamdasani told journalists in Geneva that the most vulnerable were “civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, former government officials and security force members, and of course women and girls as a whole.”
The Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP), which Pakistan has defended, is “compliant with applicable international norms and principles,” the country said in a statement.
Ahamad is looking for a safe haven where he and his sisters can start living again, going back to school, and working like they always wanted to.
