The stories of women and girls sold, taken as wives, or murdered by the Taliban remain untellable, writes BWBailey85. Many Afghan women remain incarcerated for protesting against the Taliban and those who have been released are not free to speak.
In the days that followed, I got the slightest taste of the threats and misogyny Afghan women tell me they experience every day.One Twitter user professing allegiance to the Taliban's Islamic Emirate said he would sexually assault me. Another called me"an instrument of sex." A deluge of Afghan and Muslim men falsely alleged that the women of Afghanistan are very happy and have total freedom to work and travel through society.
Often, repression is physical. The Taliban beat 10-year-old Fatima so severely for failing to cover her head that she lost control of her bladder. Shima, a member of the persecuted Hazara minority, has twice been beaten, and threatened with death, for appearing in public without a male family member. Zahra, the once prominent principal of a girls’ school, has also been publicly beaten twice by the Taliban and now fears leaving her relatives’ home.
Maryam’s husband disappeared, likely at the Taliban’s hands, several months ago. The Taliban killed Feroza’s husband in November. Unable to work in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, both women have lost the ability to support their families or enter the United States.