'Our message to the international community is this: don’t let the war and the triumph of the Taliban define our story. Afghanistan is more than its wars and battles.'
The Taliban made me a refugee twice in my life. But many other Afghan women are not as lucky as I have been. They continue their struggle for women’s rights in the face of brutal oppression and the Taliban’s campaign to erase women from Afghan society. The international community must not turn its back on them.
Since the Taliban regained power last August, millions of Afghan citizens have been deprived of their essential human rights practices. More than half of the population are excluded from political social and economic participation. Female journalists on state TV and women judges were fired from their jobs. Woman-led organizations that defended human rights have been shut down. A huge forced-displacement on ethnic and linguistic discrimination have taken place.
The team of women human rights advocates I’ve helped to build adjusted to their new reality within a month of the fall of Afghanistan. The minute my evacuation flight landed in the U.S., I began setting up networks of activists and reconnecting with other human rights defenders. We have connected with other organizations, educational institutions and communities. We amped up our security and rebranded our messaging. We found ways to keep operating.