Levine: A year under the Taliban — Five female MPs who were left behind

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One year ago this week, the fundamentalist Taliban re-entered Kabul after 20 years and seized control of Afghanistan’s government. Canadian human rights researcher and writer Corey Levine, who has worked in war zones for more than 25 years, recently travelled to Afghanistan to see what life is like for women today. This is the third of five reports.

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KABUL — Mahbuba, Mursal, Gulali, Hamida and Samia speak different languages and are from different regions and ethnicities. Two are Hazara, one is Tajik, and two are Pashtun. Yet they have one thing in common: they are former women members of Parliament, stuck in Afghanistan one year after the fall of the government they represented.

Many Afghans associated with the Republic (as Afghans commonly refer to the western-backed governments of the past 20 years, until 2021), continue to be targeted by the Taliban. The latest UN human rights report documents ongoing extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture and ill-treatment of former Afghan security and defence forces (ANSDF) and other government officials.

These abuses are continuing despite the Taliban’s announcement of an amnesty for former government officials and ANSDF members, shortly after seizing power last August. The UN report also expressed “concern about the impunity with which members of the de facto authorities appear to have carried out human rights violations.”

Read the other stories in this series:

• Levine: A year under the Taliban — How Afghanistan’s women are losing their rights and freedoms
• Levine: A year under the Taliban — UN workers still pressing for women’s rights
• Levine: A year under the Taliban — The fight to save civil society
• Levine: A year of the Taliban — Three women wait for their new life in Canada to start

The mere fact that they were women lawmakers actively engaged in public life places Mahbuba, Mursal, Gulali, Hamida and Samia at grave risk of reprisal given that the Taliban believe females should be sequestered at home. The five remain in hiding inside the country, so far unable to get out of Afghanistan even while the rest of their colleagues were helped to do so. They share their thoughts with me over a traditional Afghan lunch of rice and kebabs in my hotel room in central Kabul, where we are able to talk freely.

According to a recent article in Forbes, some 4,000 women police, 800 attorneys, 300 judges, 242 prosecutors, 13 women ministers, and eight deputy governors, have escaped the country, the majority with international support. This includes 64 of the 69 women MPs.

Canada invested more than $3 billion in Afghanistan over 20 years, with women’s political, economic and educational participation as a cornerstone of its Canadian Feminist Foreign Assistance Policy. Thousands of Afghan women were mentored, trained and otherwise supported to move into public life by Canadian-funded programs and instructors.

Gulalai, at 27 formerly Afghanistan’s youngest MP, credits Canada and other donor countries for her successful career. Trained as both a midwife and a lawyer, she was also Afghanistan’s youngest-ever deputy speaker of parliament. “What I am is because of the international community. None of this would have been possible without Canada and other western countries’ help.”

Like her four colleagues, Gulalai has kept a low profile since the government she represented was overthrown. While some of her colleagues have managed to stay out of sight in family homes, Gulalai moves house every month or so — at least 15 times since the Taliban came to power, alternating between the province she represented and Kabul, where she feels safer and more anonymous. She mourns the death of her newlywed brother who was killed not long after the Taliban came to power, suspecting it was an act of reprisal due to her status as an MP.

I first met Gulalai more than a year ago when I was working as a consultant for UN Women to support women MPs. At the time, she was fully immersed in her work as a parliamentarian and excited by what the future held. Now, she is bitter that “women politicians like me who stay in the country not only face harsh economic problems but also have no right to work, speak and even to write something on social media.” Still, she remains defiant. “Without women’s participation no government, no system can sustain itself.”

The five MPs rarely go outside, and when they do, they are escorted at all times by a male relative. All have had their homes searched and property confiscated by the Taliban, including their cars. The first months were the hardest, when the Taliban were focused on searching for people connected to the former government.

Although things have settled down a bit, the women don’t take chances and remain cloistered at home. Our meeting over lunch is the first time they are seeing each other in person since the Taliban came to power, although they are in constant contact over WhatsApp. (I myself notice the lack of females on the streets of Kabul compared to just a year ago, when I was last in the country).

Two-term parliamentarian Hamida is old enough to remember when the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001. Her experience of the Taliban’s oppressive gender policies then were enough for her to forsake getting married, a challenge in a country where women’s primary role has long been seen as dutiful “wife and mother.”

Hamida, who trained as an engineer and holds a masters’ degree in economics and development, is grateful to Canada for its willingness to take in Afghans at risk. (Afghans are very aware of Canada’s commitment to accept at least 40,000 Afghans. According to the latest figures on IRCC’s website, more than 15,000 have already arrived in Canada). But she also desperately wishes she were one of the lucky ones to find sanctuary in “peaceful, beautiful Canada.” The others concur.

Shinkai Karokhail is a former Afghan ambassador to Canada, who was sitting as an MP when the government fell. She was evacuated from Kabul a week after the Taliban took control of the country and arrived in Canada as a refugee claimant in October. Since then, she has been spearheading the evacuation of women MPs and other female leaders, in collaboration with Mina’s List, a U.S. NGO that works to advance women’s leadership globally.

Karokhail says Canada has offered sanctuary to many of the women parliamentarians. She says that nine women, sitting MPs when the government fell, have already arrived, while several others are waiting in Greece and Albania for their paperwork to be completed for their Canadian visas.

The government has not said how many Afghan women MPs Canada is planning to take in, but Karokhail estimates that up to one-quarter of them will eventually make their home here, despite the fact that many who received assurances from Canada at the beginning are still waiting to hear. Karokhail’s not sure why the five remaining women MPs are still trapped in Afghanistan. “No one helped them despite the support the international community provided to evacuate those at-risk.”

All five spent months desperately trying to find people and organizations to assist them. While first-time parliamentarian Mursal made it onto Mina’s List evacuation manifest, she has now given up hope of rescue and is trying to make peace with her situation in Afghanistan. At 29, Mursal, who was a member of the parliamentary defence committee before the government fell, would like to restart the NGO she founded, which provided assistance to approximately 4,000 people. Now all of that is gone, along with her political career. “The international community supported us for 20 years and encouraged women that we could have a role in our society. I want to continue to have a role, but I need help.”

Mursal’s family paid $1,000 U.S. to keep her from being taken as a Taliban bride. But she knows that things could turn at any moment and that to be a woman in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is a crime in itself.

As Karokhail notes, “ignoring Afghanistan will cost the world again. The country is now a role model for other extremist groups. The Taliban have eliminated half the population from all social, political and economic life. This is a dangerous message that Canada and other western countries must counter.”

 Next: The challenge for non-governmental groups.

Corey Levine is a human rights and peacebuilding consultant, researcher and writer, who has been working in war zones for more than 25 years. She has been travelling to Afghanistan since March 2002, working for a variety of organizations including the United Nations and Amnesty International. Levine returned to Afghanistan again in June.