: First Person: ‘I realized Afghan women were still fighting. And I chose to be one of them’ #IndiaNEWS #International Nasima*, 36, is a peacebuilder and a women’s rights activist in Afghanistan.

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First Person: ‘I realized Afghan women were still fighting. And I chose to be one of them’ #IndiaNEWS #International
Nasima*, 36, is a peacebuilder and a women’s rights activist in Afghanistan. After the Taliban regained effective control of the country a year ago, she continued to work in Afghanistan, in what would soon become one of the world’s most complex humanitarian emergencies.





“I was in my office on 15 August 2021. At 8 a. m. , one of my colleagues came in and told me to close the office, and sent all the women home. The Taliban were at the gates of Kabul. I was studying, finalising my master’s degree; I was the leader of a civil society organisation; and I was running two businesses.
For the previous 10 months, I had been working on building the biggest network in Afghanistan, that brought women closer to the peace process. Every day, my job was to elevate the voices of Afghan women to the forums where decisions that concerned their future were being made. I was constantly on the ground, travelling from province to province, talking to thousands of Afghan women.
At 11 a. m. that day, I locked my office and went home. Walking home, I saw that the roads were blocked with people trying to get out of Afghanistan. At 6. 30 p. m. , I saw the Taliban passing by my house for the first time.
Something died inside me on 15 August
I remembered the last time they ruled as if it were yesterday—my mother had to wear a burqa, my neighbour’s daughter was married at 11-years-old, and my mother would put a big scarf on me every time we would get out of the house. I was eight. Something died inside me on 15 August 2021, or at least that is how I felt: my hopes crushed, my education irrelevant, my investment in Afghanistan gone.
A lot of dark nights followed. My projects involving women had to be shut down; most of my women staff resigned. But I knew I had to do something. I realized the Afghanistan the Taliban were ruling now was different from the Afghanistan of the 1990s. This time they came after two decades of democracy, two decades of women’s rights, where women-led organisations were formed, and women became the main advocates for their own rights. I realized not all these women had left the country; not all the educated men had been evacuated. I realized there were still lots of women fighting inside the country. And I chose to be one of them.
On 1 September, I was ready to go back to work. I called my staff—women and men—and asked them to come back to the office. I changed the focus of our organization, but I continued to work for women only.






© UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani
A woman walks through a corridor in a village in Zindajan district, Afghanistan.

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