After fleeing to Iran from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan in early 2022, Hadia (30) established the Afghanistan Women’s Voice movement. For two years, the group has been organising small protests against women’s “erasure” from Afghan society at locations outside of the Iranian capital of Tehran. Every few weeks, a dozen or more Afghan women gather to protest against the Taliban’s crackdown on women’s freedom in Afghanistan.
To mark the third anniversary since the Islamist group seized control of the impoverished country, a group of Afghan women held a small protest in Iran this week, which they posted online. Some of the women feared retribution and wore masks; others showed their faces and told The Irish Times via the Signal messaging app that they were not afraid.
“Nobody can stop our activities and protests,” says Sakina, a 24-year-old computer science graduate from Kabul (only the Afghan women’s first names are being used for security reasons). “We want Afghan people to decide their future and for the world not to be silent about the crimes of the Taliban.”
[ Hundreds of cases of femicide recorded in Afghanistan since Taliban takeoverOpens in new window ]
“The Taliban have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis,” says Heather Barr, the women’s rights director for NGO Human Rights Watch. “They have systematically violated the rights of women and girls including as they relate to education, paid employment, freedom of speech and movement, and political participation among many others.”
Women in Afghanistan who protest against these violations face enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture. In several reported cases, teenage girls and young women were sexually assaulted and beaten by the Taliban after being detained for wearing their hijab in a manner deemed improper. Media outlets the Guardian and Rukhshana, reported in July that they had reviewed footage of an Afghan woman human rights activist being gang-raped and tortured in a Taliban jail by armed men. The activist is reported as saying the video footage was sent to her after that attack, accompanied by a threat that it would be shared more widely if she continued to criticise the Taliban regime.
A million Afghans are estimated by the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, to have fled to Iran since the upheaval of 2021. Some entered with visas, while others arrived unofficially via smugglers. Razia (24) was a student at Kabul’s civil aviation institute where she was studying to be an air traffic controller – “I wanted to serve my people and make a future for myself.” Several months after the Taliban’s return and while pregnant with her first child, Razia and her husband travelled with a smuggler across the border to Iran – “it was very dangerous”.
In Iran, Afghan girls and women are allowed to attend school and universities. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, more than 600,000 Afghan students are now enrolled in Iranian schools, while 40,000 Afghan students are now studying at Iran’s universities. However, the Iranian regime killed and tortured hundreds of protesters including women and children who took to the streets in 2022 to protest over the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini and compulsory hijab laws. In 2023, the Iranian authorities also substantially increased the rate of executions carried out, according to Human Rights Watch.
“We are women who have taken risks in two countries where there is no freedom of expression,” says Hadia. So far, none of the women involved in the online protests have been arrested. However, after a protest outside the German embassy in Tehran in November 2023, Iranian police guarding the diplomatic mission attempted to arrest Hadia. She says she avoided detention only after a long negotiation with the security forces.
Iran now hosts about 3.4 million refugees, with Afghans the largest group, according to the UNHCR, and there has been a growing backlash in Iran towards Afghans. Originally from Faryab near Afghanistan’s border with Turkmenistan, Khurshid (29) studied law and political science and hoped to join the military. After the arrival of the Taliban, she knew that would be impossible and fled with her family to Iran where she says they face daily discrimination for being Afghan. “I am impatiently waiting for the Taliban to be destroyed,” says Khurshid. “I want to return to my homeland.”
Women from Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara community, in particular, say the country is not safe for them to return to after a series of bombing attacks by groups affiliated with the Islamic State terror group in recent years left scores dead, including many schoolgirls. The extremist Sunni militant group, as well as large factions of the Taliban, view Shia muslims as heretics and they are often discriminated against in Afghanistan.
Sakina, a Hazara, is critical of Hazara leaders for accepting the new Taliban regime and singles out the former Afghan parliamentarian Jafar Mahdavi. “Without permission or asking the opinion of the Hazara people, [Mahdavi] announced that Hazara people accept the Taliban and that we are like brothers. Despite the fact that the Taliban have never accepted the Hazaras as one people, with the right to have equal rights and equal rights with the Taliban, and they will not accept them in the future,” she says.
Mahdavi did not respond to a request for comment.
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