In a hectic area of Islamabad where market stalls and vegetable vendors line every corner, our van zig-zags around potholes through a very narrow street. It’s a bumpy ride as we try and figure out if we’re even in the right neighbourhood. I don’t see street signs or numbers on buildings, just men standing idly, curiously peering through our tinted windows. We don’t want to draw unnecessary attention because we’re looking for an Afghan activist, a woman who had escaped the Taliban in her home country, yet still fears for her life in Pakistan.

 

As we pull up to a dilapidated four-story building, Fatima Etimadi meets us with a smile. We’re warmly welcomed with a traditional Afghan kiss, three affectionate pecks on the cheek, and a sweet greeting of salam. As we climb three flights of stairs to reach her temporary home, I realize it can’t be more than 700 square feet; two rooms and a small kitchenette for two families. Etimadi graciously sets out chai and an array of nuts for us. Her two children shyly peek around their moms’ legs as she pours our tea. Her daughter is nine-years-old, and her son is five. 

 

This is one of many places Etimadi and her young family have had to call home the past few years. “I feel homesick and lonely,” Etimadi explains as she thinks about Kabul, Afghanistan. She’s speaking to me through a translator but the tears welling up in her eyes speak more than any interpretation could. 

 

 

 

 

Back in Kabul, Etimadi was an avid women’s rights activist. She taught literature a few days a week and helped run a sewing collective for low-income Afghan women. She was also a fierce advocate for women in sports, even competing in martial arts herself. When I met her, she had already been away from her hometown for nearly three years. 

 

That’s when the Taliban, an ultra-conservative Muslim fundamentalist group retook control of Afghanistan. The mostly Pashtun group had spent nearly two decades in the trenches fighting NATO allies like Canada, after the terrorist attacks on September 11. Afghanistan became Canada’s longest war (2001-2014). Canadian soldiers officially left the country in 2014, but American troops stayed until August 2021 when the Taliban captured Kabul. Former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the Afghan army collapsed, and tens of thousands of Afghan refugees flooded the region. 

 

But Etimadi remained in Kabul. Her boss, a fellow activist, sent out a chilling note to her office. “I cannot guarantee anyone’s safety and I cannot take responsibility for anyone’s life,” he warned. “So you can stay or you can go, it’s totally up to you.” This warning came at the same time the Taliban was making big promises to the international community, vowing to reform their ‘90s ruling regime. But Etimadi didn’t believe it. She was in Grade 3 when the Taliban first came to power in 1996. Because of their last ban on education, she missed out on three vital years of school.

 

 

“I have all the problems in my life because I protest.”

 

 

“Of course they impacted my life and the life of other women gravely,” she said. “I knew they hadn’t changed and I had a feeling they would never change their perspective on women and their role in the society.” 

 

So in the weeks after the takeover, Etimadi rallied together female activists to take to the streets and protest. While many protests made international headlines, her father bore the brunt of her actions. Taliban members threatened him at his house, even physically hurting him. He finally told Etimadi to leave Kabul, for the safety of the family. 

 

“I’m a human rights activist,” she told me. “I have all the problems in my life because I protest.” Etimadi’s young family left their extended family behind and fled next door to Pakistan. Roughly a million Afghans sought refuge there following the Taliban takeover in 2021. But they are only a quarter of the four million that are already in the country. Years of turmoil from a war with the West and the 1979 Soviet occupation led to a mass exodus to Pakistan. 

 

But even in a country that provides temporary refuge, life has not been easy. Renewing visas is a constant, expensive process, as the Pakistani government cracks down on undocumented Afghans. Hundreds without official papers have been rounded up and put on trucks back to Afghanistan in the past year. Etimadi continues to support the women’s sewing collective from Islamabad by organizing shipments of completed Afghan outfits to foreign countries. But even that work has put her family at risk.

 

 

 

 

“It was 11 p.m. when we got a knock on the door,” she tells me. Five to six men were gathered outside her apartment in Islamabad, demanding to talk to her. They wanted to see her computer, which has all the clothing shipment details. “Who are you spying for? Who’s paying you money to support the women protesting in Afghanistan?” they demanded. Etimadi refused to answer their questions. They eventually grabbed her young daughter and pointed a gun at her head. “If you do not speak, we will break your daughter’s skull,” they warned. 

 

Etimadi resisted every urge in her body to use her martial arts training against them and instead smashed her fist into the wall in frustration. The man with the gun hit Etimadi, leaving a scar on her forehead that has remained. The men only left when Etimadi swore to share her contacts in the women’s network. That night, the family snuck out of that apartment to relocate and have been on the move ever since.

 

This harsh reality in Pakistan still pales in comparison to life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Every few months, the regime adds appalling restrictions on women and girls in the country. Women have been banned from showing any part of their body in public. They’re not allowed to glance at men other than their husbands or brothers. Females are banned from singing or speaking in front of people, or from leaving their homes without a male chaperone. Although the Taliban has promised to reinstate schools under Sharia law, it has been years with no action; girls are not allowed in the classroom beyond Grade 6. 

 

 

 

 

More than 150 Taliban decrees now limit female freedoms in the country; the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue has been set up to enforce the rules. The ministry has arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured, publicly flogged, and killed women for not following suit. Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands are trying to challenge the Taliban, taking them to the International Criminal Court over gender discrimination. Some United Nations experts are further pushing to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity. Until then, the Taliban’s systemic strategy to oppress and subjugate the women of Afghanistan is working. They’ve created a dystopian world, completely foreign to young generations born into progressive Afghan families since the turn of the millennia. Mohadessa, 18, is one of them. 

 

Currently confined in Kabul, Mohadessa had dreams of becoming a psychologist. She’s luckily able to attend online underground classes through Daricha, a non-profit network of schools run out of Toronto. Still, she constantly worries about her future. I connected with Mohadessa through Skype where she tells me that girls younger than her are being married off to older men, including Taliban fighters.

 

Mohadessa recently visited an Afghan village and noticed that a nine year old girl was already engaged. “She’s even younger than my younger sister! She doesn’t know what a marriage is!” she told me.

 

Yet, this is a reality many young Afghan girls face. The country is floundering economically—more than 12 million people are starving—so even families that wouldn’t normally sell off their precious daughters, are doing so to keep afloat. The United Nations expects the restrictions imposed by the Taliban to increase the number of child marriages by at least 25 percent. 

 

That’s one of the reasons human rights defenders Saba and Nargis fled to Pakistan. Saba has a teenage daughter. Nargis was thinking about a bleak future with a newborn. We huddled into Nargis’s tiny living space in Islamabad, not much bigger than a large Canadian closet. 

 

 

She scoffs at the fact that the Taliban allows women to beg on the street but won’t allow a woman “to take a pen in her hand to continue her education.”

 

 

“On 15th August, when the fall of the government happened, it wasn’t just the fall of the government, but also the fall of women and the activists and everybody who was raising their voices,” Saba says frustratingly, by way of translator. The avid human rights activist lost both her father and her mother to suicide bomb attacks in Kabul in 2021. 

 

“I felt it was my obligation to raise my voice and get on the streets and go face-to-face with the Taliban,” she says. That decision cost her dearly. She was arrested, beaten, and then electrically shocked. “I still have nightmares of that time and I’m still feeling pain in my feet.”

 

When school was banned for girls in Afghanistan, Saba knew she had to get her teenage daughter out of the country. She scoffs at the fact that the Taliban allows women to beg on the street but won’t allow a woman “to take a pen in her hand to continue her education.”

 

But even being next door is not entirely safe. Pakistan has deep ties to the Taliban, with many insurgents frequently crossing the border. Saba has had to move half a dozen times to keep her kids safe. “Every single day I get these calls on my cell number, on my WhatsApp… I don’t know who’s calling or who’s contacting me,” she says.

 

Nargis was a photojournalist whose work has also put her at risk. One day, just after she dropped off her hard drive at her news station, the Taliban stopped her en route home and demanded she turn over her material. 

 

 

“I will not stop raising my voice.”

 

 

Despite not having any content on her person, they slapped her and threatened to target her husband and extended family if she didn’t stop. But she continued to take photos. The stress from the threats took a toll on her, and Nargis suffered a miscarriage that year. That was her final straw; she knew she had to leave Kabul. “When I’m speaking about all those past memories it feels like I’m on fire, like my whole body is on fire and it’s burning.” 

 

As I listen to their stories, there’s an overlap between the pain, frustration, and triumphs. Their perseverant protests kept the world informed of the daily brutalities of an authoritarian regime. They are heroines who took and continue to take exceptional risks to fight for their fellow sisters, and now they’re paying the price. They’re stuck in spaces not much safer than the ones they’ve fled from. Their children are at risk. And yet, they persist.

 

“I will not stop raising my voice,” says Nargis. “I will not stop protesting because I am not the only mother. There are millions of other women, many mothers in Afghanistan and I have to be a voice for them.” Saba agrees and adds that Afghan girls and their futures are at the heart of all they do. “When I look at my daughter… she gives me motivation, happiness and energy for my daily life,” Saba explains. “This nightmare will end one day.”

 

I am in awe of these women: their strength and their courage, their resilience and their boldness, all in the face of danger. We have so much to learn from the Afghan spirit. I pray these formidable women can return home one day, to witness the future they have been fighting for. 

 

 

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