‘The Taliban Turned All My Ambitions Into Dust’

Two years on, Afghanistan’s people are mostly bereft of rights, education, jobs, and hope. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Taliban brutality, and the poverty and hunger caused by the economic crisis they are incapable of fixing. The Taliban leadership, for their part, are raking in billions of dollars in taxes and contraband. 

Lynne O’Donnell reported from Afghanistan throughout the war, got the last plane out, and has kept an eye on things ever since, even to her own peril. She’s written about the impact on regional and global security of the Taliban’s rise to power, theft of international aid, harboring of terrorist and jihadist groups, and the lack of consequences for their policies. 

She’s collected the stories of some of those who have endured, both inside and outside Afghanistan. The interviews below have been edited for length and clarity.

‘The damage has been irreparable’

Nooria Najafizada lives in northern Balkh province with her parents. She worked as a legal advisor with an international organization and was a defender of women’s rights before the Taliban return. She is 30 and unmarried. In the past two years, her mental health has suffered, and she battles depression.

Since the Taliban took over our lives, we have been deprived of our identity in all aspects of life, professional, personal, and social. We have had to bear an exorbitant cost, and in many cases, the damage has been irreparable. We are experiencing the darkest period of our lives. We lost our fundamental and human rights, including the right to education, freedom of expression, social and political participation, and civil activities. My sisters were excluded from university and school. Not only me but many other women had to leave their jobs. Keeping women out of economic activities has increased poverty, which is a cause of family violence. Since the Taliban consider women worthless, violence against women has not been and will not be investigated.

My life is in free fall—freedom of speech, social activity, and economic activities are close to zero, these fundamental conditions for a comfortable life taken away from me. Living like this has led me into depression and other mental problems. The misogynistic policies of the Taliban have made me see the future as dark and unclear. I have no hope for change. The Taliban will not change. But I will not give up wishing that our lost opportunities and achievements will come back.

‘Grappling with an uncertain future again’

Sayed Niyam Alami, 24, worked with Afghan Peace Watch (APW) mapping war-related incidents, and was studying at American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), in Kabul, when the republic fell. He was evacuated and completed his studies at the American University of Iraq. He remains in Iraq waiting for a U.S. visa. 

Aug. 15, 2021, was a calamity that pushed me and my family into a frenzy of finding survival. I knew we’d be hunted and held to “pay for our sins” as the Taliban would say of all those affiliated with the United States, primarily because of my association with AUAF and APW. It was well-known that the Taliban regarded AUAF as a bastion of American spies.

On the day the Taliban entered Kabul. They stormed the AUAF campus, and that’s when I knew my education and dreams for Afghanistan were shattered. We believed our education and diplomas would become death warrants. The Taliban are now using the campus for government operations and housing their officials and families. 

My family’s fate is uncertain in the United States and mine in Iraq. I have been accepted into a number of U.S. universities to do graduate studies in economics. Due to the protracted visa processing, I’ve had to repeatedly defer admissions and scholarships. As the fall semester is approaching and there’s no update on my refugee case, I feel like I will have to forgo that opportunity again. 

I don’t have any security in Iraq. I can’t work here, and I can’t make use of my education to contribute somehow in Afghanistan, where my fellow citizens have been languishing under Taliban rule. I feel choked and grappling with an uncertain future again.

A child sits between two women in full burqas at an orphanage in Afghanistan’s Takhar province on Jan. 3.Muhammed Abdullah Kurtar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

‘Now my worries are for my children and for their future’

Zarya (not his real name) is a 27-year-old former journalist who spent months in hiding in 2021 as the Taliban searched for journalists and closed down news outlets. He eventually returned to his home village, outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, where he lives with his wife, three children, and his elderly parents.

I miss the life I had before, as an investigative journalist. I had a fulfilling job and I had status, hope for the future and that I would move through life making progress. But now I feel like I am living the life of an illiterate. None of my skills or experience have any meaning or use. 

I set up a small business, a shop using my computer to help poor people when they need letters written or forms filled in. But I hardly make money from this to buy enough food for my family. I have three children, two sons and a daughter; one of the boys is already at school. And my two sisters, brother, and parents are all living together. It’s a pretty hard life for us now. Just buying food is a hardship, as I have no fixed income. 

I don’t feel that I am in any direct danger any more, unlike in the early days after the Taliban arrived. I was in Kabul attending a journalism seminar, and couldn’t come home for some months because I was afraid I would be arrested and jailed, or worse. Now the searches are mostly for terrorists, like Islamic State. When they are searching for IS, they come to the village and search every house. Now my worries are for my children and for their future. I spend every day and night worrying about this. 

‘I consider myself stateless and homeless’

Hussna Rahimi was a radio and television talk show host and a household name in Afghanistan. She was pregnant with her second child and visiting the U.K. with her husband when the republic collapsed. 

When I traveled to the U.K. on July 25, 2021, with my husband, I left my 2-year-old daughter Mahsa with my family as I planned to return home in August for the birth of my second child. When the country collapsed, I had no choice but to stay in London. Parisa was born here on Sept. 17.

I tried to bring Mahsa, who has a British passport because her father is a British citizen, from Kabul. I reported her case to the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office under the scheme helping the British nationals left in Afghanistan. I wrote to my member of Parliament. But I received no help and had to make one of the hardest and riskiest decisions of my life: to return to Kabul and bring my daughter home. 

It was not an easy decision. I had been a Taliban target for some years. After [journalist] Yama Siawah was murdered by the Taliban, in Nov. 2020, I was told by the intelligence service that along with other high-profile journalists, I was a target of the Haqqani network [an arm of the Taliban headed by the now-interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani]. We were offered support to leave the country then, but I decided to stay. I was not going to give in to the Taliban or the Haqqani network.

The psychological impact of the collapse, its consequences for my family, colleagues, the country, has put me in an extremely difficult situation and imposed enormous pressures. It occupies my mind, my soul, and my everything. Still I cannot believe what has happened, and I cannot comprehend it. I am still in shock. While appreciating the U.K.’s support for recently displaced Afghans, I consider myself stateless and homeless.

Taliban soldiers take security measures as Afghan Muslims gather at a mosque in Kabul on June 28.Murteza Khaliqi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

‘The Taliban regime poses a threat to the people of Afghanistan’

Annie Pforzheimer was the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the acting assistant secretary for Afghanistan at the U.S. State Department from 2017 to 2019. 

I have a constant sense of mourning and shame now, even in happy moments. I cannot begin to imagine what my Afghan friends in exile, and girls and women in Afghanistan, are experiencing. In 2019, once I had retired from the State Department, I began speaking and writing about the need for principled and continued engagement in Afghanistan. In April 2021, I knew immediately that U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision [to adhere to former President Donald Trump’s Doha Agreement and surrender to the Taliban] was short-sighted and would prove fatal. The actual collapse came while I was on a phone call with others trying to protect an organization working with women’s shelters. 

I am adamant that the Taliban regime poses a threat to the people of Afghanistan, and to all of us and our children, because the Taliban serve as an example to other extremists of a brutal dictatorship triumphing over a flawed democracy. Even though hope right now is in short supply, that is no reason to stop trying to visualize, and then support, an Afghanistan that accommodates all its people’s talents and their dreams of a just society.

An Afghan girl jumps off the wall of a small cemetery in Kandahar on July 29, 2022. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

‘The country is moving forward’

Hayatullah Nikzad is a 20-year-old farmer in a rural district in the western province of Herat, which borders Iran and Turkmenistan. He milks cows and sheep and gathers eggs, which help sustain his family. He is a Taliban supporter, and was happy to see the U.S.-led alliance leave Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban came, the country is moving forward. It is peaceful, there is good security, there are no thieves—it is safe. There is progress, though the situation is changing every day.

Under the previous government, bribery was rampant, no one invested in business. America is guilty, because America invaded Afghanistan. But the fault lies also with the government of Afghanistan. No country and no person should suffer in pain. But this is history. Now we have to deal with the present, to make sure that all suffering ends. This is what I support.

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‘All my dreams disappeared’

Subhan (not his real name) is a young gay man in one of Afghanistan’s major cities. Life wasn’t easy for LGBTQ people before the Taliban regained power, but it was better than now. He lives in fear that he will be reported to the Taliban, and that he will be imprisoned or worse.

As an Islamic country, Afghanistan had not established any laws to protect LGBTQ people as a republic, but the Taliban stone LGBTQ people to death. Life wasn’t easy under the republic, but it was better because we had some freedom. After the Taliban took over the government, my life completely fell apart. All my dreams disappeared.

I have no income, as there is no work for me. I was studying medicine at a private university, but with no work after the Taliban came to power, I could no longer afford to go. A friend was helping support me financially for about six months, but unfortunately, he died. Sometimes I ask friends for financial help, but sometimes they get tired of giving me money and tell me to go and dance at parties, or prostitute myself to make money. Sometimes I think of suicide because I really cannot afford to live.

Afghanistan ‘will be pushed into a shameful political past’

Scott Richards is a co-founder of the not-for-profit Presidium Network, which supports people in crisis. He has advised the Afghan republic, United States, and U.K. on security.

There were clear signs in July 2021 that the collapse was imminent. I was writing recommendations concerning a regional arms deal for the [U.S.] Senate Armed Services Committee, and noted in that report that the Taliban takeover was near. I was in constant communication with the republic government, and there was a sense that Biden would never abandon the republic. It became evident when the U.S. didn’t deliver the scheduled budget. There was a last-minute scramble, but by then it was too late.

Functionally, Afghanistan needs financial aid; it cannot stimulate the economy or attract foreign investment because of the sovereign risk profile—there are no capital protections. The methods of engagement have been an abject failure on both sides. And with the U.S. presidential election coming up, and the defunding of aid programs that we’ve already seen, the runway to turn things around is all but exhausted. Once defunded, refunding will be an excruciatingly difficult task. 

Neither Democrats nor Republicans will want to address Afghanistan. When the U.S. voter hears the word, they’ll ask themselves: “We left. Why are we still talking about that?” Then there will be fewer resources made available for the country, and it will be pushed into a shameful political past.

Two burqa-clad women walk past a market in Fayzabad, located in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, on Jan. 23.Omer Abrar/AFP via Getty Images

‘I lost all my freedoms as a woman, as a human being’

Shamail Tawana Nasiri, 26, arrived in the United States from Afghanistan at the end of July. As a Shiite Hazara woman who openly led street protests calling for the restoration of women’s rights, she ticked a lot of the extremists’ boxes. She was detained and beaten by Taliban gunmen repeatedly, once so badly that she couldn’t walk for two weeks. 

Before the fall of the republic, I worked in the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. In 2017, I set up a women’s library called Nasle-Naw in Daikundi province. We held reading competitions and workshops for women. The first thing the Taliban did when they took over was to shut my library. We have had over 50 street protests in the past two years, and over 30 indoor protests. We have done everything we could to ensure women have their rights, but the situation for women has not improved a bit. We were threatened, insulted, humiliated, and beaten by the Taliban at every protest. 

The Hazaras are treated more harshly than other ethnicities by the Taliban, for several reasons: one is because Hazaras place greater value on women’s and human rights. They’ve had an active presence in the security forces, in sports, and their women participate in all aspects of life without any restrictions. That is why the Taliban call Hazaras kafirs, or apostates, saying Hazara women are not observing Islam and should be eliminated.

I had carefully planned my future, but the Taliban turned all my ambitions into dust. I lost all my freedoms as a woman, as a human being. I lost everything: the right to walk outside my home, the right to be educated, and work. I feel unable to breathe. The women of Afghanistan have lost all their human rights because they are women. 

Now that I have come to the United States, I am trying to stand on my own feet, learn the system here, and then help the girls in Afghanistan who are standing against the Taliban guns and tyranny with their bare hands.

A mural depicts women with the words “Afghan women will not be silent anymore” on a street in Kabul on Jan. 10. Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

‘Afghanistan is also an example of how creative, persistent, and courageous women’s resistance is.’

Heather Barr is the associate director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, and has done stints in Afghanistan and with the United Nations.

I flew home from vacation to Islamabad, landing at about 1 a.m. on Aug. 15. I turned on my phone, and it was clear the world had changed. It’s been nonstop ever since. There are a lot of us—foreigners who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, who owe Afghanistan and Afghans a great deal. I really appreciate those who are distributing food or doing the mountains of paperwork to try to get individuals asylum. As a women’s rights advocate, sometimes it feels like all we’re doing is being witnesses to the pain.

It’s very hard to find any room for optimism. The Taliban seem both firmly entrenched and unlikely to moderate their abuses in any way. All evidence points to the opposite. They seem endlessly inventive—obsessed even—with finding new things they can take away to make women’s lives more miserable and more restricted.

The international response has been instructive, in a deeply alarming way, about just how little the world cares about women’s rights. We’re in the middle of a global backlash against women’s rights—and LGBT rights. The international communities’ disengagement about the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan is both feeding that and a symptom of that. It’s time for a stronger, more connected and more ferocious response from women worldwide to the attacks we’re seeing on women’s rights. Afghanistan is the worst example for why that’s needed.

One of the things that gives me hope is that Afghanistan is also an example of how creative, persistent, and courageous women’s resistance is. The Taliban have actually radicalized a generation of women and girls. The courage of the protesters still coming out on the streets to fight back is beyond words.