The Letter: The Taliban and the Future for Women in Afghanistan
Six months ago, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. For Sweeta Noori, she knew what was to come. For Afghan women leaders and activists like Sweeta, the Taliban’s first regime, which lasted from 1996 to 2001, was devastating.
Women’s rights and opportunities in Afghanistan had improved significantly since then, but in the last six months, Afghan women and girl’s lives have been catapulted into one of neglect and abandonment. Today, their rights have been completely curtailed hope and progress have been replaced by fear..
Sweeta Noori at a recent White House march to support Afghan women
Sweeta is a vocal critic of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Last year, she was one of several speakers from Afghanistan at a White House march to support Afghan women who foresaw the implications of America’s abrupt pull out.
“The way they abandoned Afghanistan is not acceptable. They did it in the middle of the night. It weakened the troops in Afghanistan. They lost their hope. The Afghan people lost their trust, the army lost their trust,” she shared.
Since the Taliban regained power, women have been removed from their workplaces and girls banned from attending school. They are also being subject to other unfair restrictions , such as the ban of women from hammams and restrictions on travel. While the Taliban continues to hold control, women and girls find their dreams of an education and a career quickly fading away.
It wasn’t always like this. Sweeta, now 49, described the year of her birth, 1973, as a time of optimism for women. The republic welcomed its first president, former Prime Minister Khan, a human rights advocate and supporter of women’s education. Sweeta’s mother was a prominent doctor and a professor at the Kabul Institute of Medicine. She’d planned to follow in her footsteps. With the rise of the Mujahidin (guerrilla fighters), however, Sweeta was forced to drop out of medical school. Ongoing violence caused her family to flee to Pakistan.
When the Taliban took power in 1996, Sweeta’s family returned to Kabul hopeful for a different future. Instead, the Taliban’s restrictive interpretation of Islam relegated women to their homes, unable to move freely, work or be educated. Inside her home, she taught English to other women, a crime at that time but a personal duty to her sisters.
The fall of the Taliban and United States’ post-9/11 intervention brought renewed optimism and progress for some, but not all, Afghan women. Sweeta often spoke of two Afghanistans: one in Kabul, where women were gaining access to an education, economic and political opportunities, and another outside of the capital, where women were subject to a different set of rights and laws that restricted their freedom and endangered their lives.
As country director for Women for Women International in Afghanistan at the time, Sweeta worked on the frontlines with the poorest and most marginalized women. 80 percent were illiterate and innumerate. Many of the women did not know their own age or the ages of their children. Several were single heads of households with multiple children to care for. It was common for these women to marry off their daughters early to reduce the family’s economic burden.
The current restrictions being placed on women and girls in Afghanistan means they will likely become even more marginalized, doomed to a life of servitude and subordination. Sweeta had worked to create better outcomes for her Afghan sisters, at great cost to herself and her family.
In June, 2008, when we were both working for Women for Women International, an organization that helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives, Sweeta received a letter from the Taliban that forever changed her life.
“My husband and I were watching TV when I got a call from one of our guards advising me not to come to the office because of a death threat they received,” Sweeta told me. “In the morning I decided to go anyway. I never trusted these kinds of letters… I was not the person to be scared or give up. I worked in very difficult circumstances such as the Taliban time.”
Letter from the Taliban to Sweeta Noori
“I went through the letter ten times, and as I read it again and again there was a growing fear inside me,” Sweeta said. Loosely translated from Dari it read:
“…You and your organization did not pay attention to our past several warnings and [are] still continuing to encourage innocent women to do anti-Islamic, anti-cultural and traditional activities in the country, and continue to mislead our women and our communities. From now on your fate and destiny is in your own hand.”
Two phone calls from the Taliban came next. They seemed to be tracking Sweeta’s every movement. They warned her that if she did not quit her job they would kill her and her seven-year-old son and baby daughter and she would be responsible for their deaths.
“As a mother of two kids, I could not believe these two innocents were the ones who should pay [for] the cost of my work,” said Sweeta.
I used every political connection I could think of to get Sweeta and her children out of Afghanistan. After September 11th, though, the U.S. was letting few Afghans into the country, fearing potential terrorists. Finally, word came in July of 2008 that their visas had been approved. They would be safe.
Women like Sweeta risked their lives simply for trying to help their own. Now an American citizen, Sweeta and other Afghan-American women continue to press the Biden Administration to “honor its commitment to gender equality” by ensuring that women and girls in the country receive sufficient support and protection.
Sweeta dismisses any Taliban effort to appear more tolerant as mere “window dressing,” designed to garner international support and lift sanctions. The letter is a tangible reminder that nothing has changed.
“It’s really heart-breaking, what’s happening,” said Sweeta. “ This cannot be the end of the world for Afghan women.”
As a woman, mother and fellow activist, I can only echo Sweeta’s words. This cannot be the end of the world for Afghan women.