For Mahjub Habibi, 31, going out alone is an ordeal. Pride too. Because in the Afghanistan of the Taliban, who came to power on August 15, 2021, it is prohibited. Women can only venture into the street in the presence of a Mahram (a man of the family). No way to go unnoticed. Majestic velvet abaya decorated with gilding, green and red hijab: Mahjub’s outfit contrasts radically with the instructions posted in Kabul, encouraging women to wear the burqa or at least a black veil. “It’s already a resistance”, she sketches under a surgical mask which conceals part of her made-up face. That too, women are no longer entitled to it. Just like driving, working, going to the park, to the public baths, to the restaurant or even to school. “We live in prison, we no longer have rights,” she laments.
When she arrives in the flowery backyard of this once trendy Kabuliote café, the young woman does not sit down right away. She carefully scans the place with her gaze. Since the return of the Taliban, cafes and restaurants must separate their customers: on one side, men, on the other families. It is forbidden for women to come alone or to meet there. A priori, no risk that a Taliban is in the same room, but there could be moles. She has already escaped an arrest last November, when five of her friends were taken away, and knows that she is in the sights of the regime.
After texting her husband by encrypted messaging, she finally dares to ask. “If I get arrested, he will know where I was. He can tell the others.” The “others” are the women’s rights activists with whom Mahjub has been demonstrating openly since September 2021. Under the slogan “Bread, work, freedom”, around a hundred of them march several times a month in Kabul. Despite the threat of arrest, the activist says she is ready to continue the fight at all costs. “I don’t want my daughters to tell me one day that I didn’t fight for their rights,” she sighs, trying to hold back tears.
At the end of December, female students came to swell the ranks of these mobilizations, under the slogan: “Education is our right, we want to recover it”, after the Taliban Ministry of Education announced the ban on the university. for the girls.
However, these movements remain sporadic and specific to Kabul, the capital, according to Karim Pakzad, Franco-Afghan researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations: “Firstly because this type of protest is not in the culture Afghan and that the regime reigns by terror, but also because some of the women likely to demonstrate have been evacuated by the West. The fight of women exists, “but goes through other acts than demonstrations”, continues this expert, who believes that a large majority of Afghan women are against the Islamist regime. In fact, they are the only ones to oppose the Taliban, observe several NGOs.
In the maze of a district in the south of Kabul, classes are given to young girls in an undisclosed location. “Every day, nearly 800 of them, at college and high school level, come to study when they are not allowed to,” says Najib*, the director, who has turned his house into an underground school. That morning, one of the classes of high school girls is studying Dari literature (the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan). “For us, it’s the only open door, says Parouhna, 16, in front of his nodding friends. Thanks to this school, we can still study, keep the hope of becoming someone one day, and above all have a social life.”
Not all students are from the neighborhood. Some walk up to 10 kilometers to come and study, dodging Taliban checkpoints. “Every day, I change my path to avoid being followed, says Sahar, 15. There are girls who have stopped coming, because sometimes we are arrested by the Taliban and they beat us. We risk our life to go to school.” All consider themselves to be “resistant”, from the youngest, aged 11, to the adults. This is the whole meaning of the teaching that is lavished on them. “Giving them an education will allow them to fight for their rights”, underlines the director.
Among them, Parvin, Omid and Mahsa dream of being doctors. While Soheila and Mina would like to be lawyers. In Kabul, but also in Bamiyan or Herat, these clandestine schools have multiplied since the Taliban took power. “Unlike the first regime (between 1996 and 2001), this principle of educating girls despite the bans has become widespread, notes Karim Pakzad. Today, if women have become the symbol of resistance in Afghanistan, it’s because they have tasted freedom for years and don’t want to go back.”
Further to the west of the capital, in the district of Dasht-e-Barchi, 500 women crowd every day into a building which at first glance seems abandoned. But on the first floor, it’s effervescence, in this hidden workshop. In one room, dozens of women, behind sewing machines, are making embroidered coats. In the adjoining room, about fifteen others make jewels in stones and silver, some of which are made with a rather unexpected recycled material. “The Taliban often shoot in the air, so we collect their bullets before melting them,” says the founder of the place (funded by NGOs), Laila Haidari. We turn their hatred into peace…”
In jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and with her veil barely placed in the middle of her head, Marzyah, 21, oversees the manufacture of jewelry, intended to be exported to Europe. “It’s the only place where I feel free, she says. Outside, Kabul is a ghost town, a city without a soul. Here, with all these women who work and help each other, it’s as if we came back to life, that we regained our place in society, in the economy. Because all are paid. For Laila Haidari, whose brown locks float in the air, “this place allows hundreds of girls to dream again, to have hope for the future”. Like Kubra Shirzad, recruited in the sewing department. The young woman discovered a passion for rap, despite the total ban on music in the country. She hopes to find funding to shoot her first clip on the rooftops of Kabul and proclaim her texts there that tell of her condition as an Afghan woman. Despite the danger it would pose to her.
So far, the Taliban seem to ignore these clandestine activities – at least on the surface. Because if some places are still kept secret, others are well known to the new masters of the country, but they refuse to set foot there. “The Taliban are caught up in their religious and tribal beliefs that they cannot be in a room with one or more women who are not related to them,” says Karim Pakzad. This leaves these centers a certain freedom. In Dasht-e-Barchi, Laila Haidari’s school was visited by a dozen Taliban a few weeks ago. “When they got to the sewing room, they backed off in a hurry and almost ran away at the sight of so many women,” she smiles. A modesty which she intends to take advantage of to try to take her life in hand.
* The first name has been changed.
