There Is A Growing Fear- An Interview With Nargees

Our Co-Founder Naomi Schware sat down for a conversation with Afghan American Nargees J. to discuss the current situation for women in Afghanistan. A slightly edited transcript, for length, is as follows:

Naomi:  What kind of communication do you have with women in Afghanistan?

Nargees: The communication I have is mostly with the women in my family. They’re all educated; well half of them are students still, and half of them in the workforce. We communicate through WhatsApp and calling cards. It's getting almost impossible for them to buy credit to use their cells. So I'm getting calling cards to contact them to check on their security and to get updates of what's happening, because there's so much limited information in the media.

Naomi: And what do you hear from them? 

Nargees: There is a growing fear. All the women in my life, in Afghanistan, lived through the Taliban twenty years ago. No one was expecting the fall to be this quick and everyone is just overwhelmed. And everyone that I speak to, they stopped going to work all of a sudden. Their whole livelihood has changed. It was like an alarm clock, that they didn't set for themselves in their life and their career, or for their families, just went off.

A lot of the women, especially my cousin who's a doctor, thinks she's going to get killed because of her opinions on women's rights being human rights. And she's seeking a way out, any possibilities of just escaping Afghanistan as soon as possible so that she can be saved. She sees every place outside of Afghanistan as safe, even if she doesn't have any family there, doesn't have any resources available, but it sounds safe. It feels safer than being in Afghanistan.

Naomi: What is the worst-case scenario for women in Afghanistan?

Nargees: There are two. [1] Women are forced back to being at home. There are women who do that as a choice and it's fine, but for educated women, I think it's hard to just commit to this being the purpose of your life. [2] When I was a kid, the Taliban would kidnap women and force them into marriages or not even marriages, women would become sex slaves for the extremists. And so many women would try to take their own lives before that could happen to them. Or so many would marry someone older or someone that they're not in love with, because they didn't want to marry a Talib or be forced into a relationship with a Talib. And the last statement that I heard from one of the Taliban officials was that any woman from ages 12 to 45 is appropriate for them to take by force. And I think a lot of women, especially younger women who are not even thinking of marriage yet, they're seeing this as the next thing that will happen to them in their life. Instead of hitting puberty or growing up, it's going to be rape. And it's going to be systematic rape that happens not just to them, but to pretty much everyone in their age group.

And that's scary. Rape is a weapon of war and they're using that. And it’s that fear that I think women have in Afghanistan right now, and why so many of them are rushing their families to the airport or to Pakistan, is because of that fear. 

There is an Afghan virtue, we call it Namoos, in which woman are sacred. That is challenged by the Taliban and that's disrespected by the Taliban. All the young women who were going to college about two months ago, now had to stop. The next thing is like, "How can we escape to be safe and make sure that we're not used as a weapon of war by the Taliban?"

Naomi: And what is the best-case scenario for women?

Nargees: I don't think I have any. With the Taliban in charge, I don't think there's anything that can be good that can come out of it for women. 

I was a kid the first time the Taliban came, and Afghanistan wasn’t advanced as it is now. And of course, there was no social media and there was no internet. What it feels like to have your freedom taken away is to feel like you do not belong on the planet Earth, like you do not have the right to exist. That somehow you're a flaw and everyone around you keeps reminding you that that's the problem. The problem is not the society, but the problem is you.

And I feel like with the Taliban, that's what's communicated to women. And they do communication by the media now, but as well as by beating women on the streets. That sends fear to the rest of the women in Afghanistan. I feel like it breaks you inside and not just emotionally, but also mentally that you find yourself thinking that you're not capable anymore of this job, or this career, or this goal, because it's no longer given to you.

It controls your mind. I feel like somehow it makes women almost like a pet or an animal that's not a human. That you're just there for only one purpose and all these other things are not for you. You can't value it and you can't even think about it. 

So many women from the first time the Taliban took over in the late 1990s, they were like, "Oh, I wish I had gone to school, but we weren't allowed." Or, "I wish I had set a career for myself, but we weren't allowed." Or, "If I could go back and I could do things differently, this is what I want to be." 

And that including my mom, who's now 54. She's said, "I wanted to be a nurse. As a little girl, that's what I looked up to, but in that 40 years of war, that opportunity was stripped away from me. And it wasn't because I didn't have access to it. It wasn't there for me. You weren't even allowed to think about it." And I feel like for the young woman that are in Afghanistan, for the young girls that are in Afghanistan, this is kind of like, "You don't have a purpose to be on the planet. You don't have the purpose to be on Earth. Your only purpose is to be a home caretaker, and that's it. Your purpose is to serve men and patriarchy." And that's devastating. I think as a woman now living in 2021, that feels wrong to think about, but that's what women have to go through in Afghanistan.

Naomi: Do you know any women who agree with the lifestyle the Taliban is forcing on women?

Nargees: No. And I was in Afghanistan for over one year and a few months [2019-2020], and I did not meet one single woman that agrees with what the agenda, what the Taliban have as their agenda.

When I left Afghanistan in 2020, they were holding the peace talks in Doha. And a lot of my colleagues were asking, "Why are we having peace talks with them when they're bombing our schools? Why are they being brought to the table for discussion? The common folks should be brought to the table for discussions about what they want and how the government should move forward, but we're giving the Taliban rights and we're allowing them to have an agenda and to bring up their needs, while they're the ones that are causing chaos in the cities and in people's lives and people fear them. Why is so much power given to them?”

No matter what they say or how they say they changed, I don't think their agenda will ever be humanitarian. I think it's just for personal greed and for their personal beliefs, and whatever version of Islam that they have created for themselves and what they believe in. And it's all extreme. There's nothing in there that you can be like, "Oh, I can agree with this." I don't think I've heard anything from the Taliban that I'm like, "Oh, okay. That point makes sense." And I'm still waiting to meet a woman either here in the states or in Afghanistan that would say, "Yeah, I agree with the Taliban agenda." Because the Taliban agenda is not an agenda for women. It's agenda for patriarchy and it's an agenda for extremists.

Naomi: Educated women are leaving Afghanistan. What if all of these educated women leave, what's left in Afghanistan for women?

Nargees: When I was a kid, my mom was not educated. My aunties weren't educated. They only went to school as far as third grade, and they knew, that being under the regime of Taliban meant the same for their children. And I know women who had close to nothing who hitchhiked from Afghanistan to a better place, to Pakistan, to Iran, because they knew that being under the Taliban regime meant that for the life of their children. I don't think it's just educated women who are trying to exit.

I think educated women are in a hurry because they fear for their life and I believe the Taliban will slowly come after them. They said that they weren't going to do so, but I have no faith in them. And I feel like after them, women who have freedom in their houses, even though they're not educated, they will slowly start to leave Afghanistan. I feel like soon enough, there won't be much left, and the woman who are left are probably under really terrible conditions that they can't leave. And I feel like if they had the choice to leave, they would leave no matter what their status is when it comes to education.

Naomi: If all the women who are educated and activists leave, then where does that leave Afghanistan in general? Would you rather those women leave, or would you rather them stay?

Nargees: I can't have an opinion on that because I'm safe. My biological family is safe and I'm not in their shoes. And they don't have what it takes to take on Taliban. When the fall of Afghanistan happened, the world was just watching how it happened, but no one was saying, "You know what? Fight back. We have your back." And there's so much corruption in Afghanistan and I feel like for women who stay, it will be hell on Earth, I think. That's just my opinion. For women who stay in the Taliban regime, it will be like living in hell on Earth, and they just have to survive it. And that's it.

Naomi: Is there anything else you would like to share about women in Afghanistan?

Nargees: I think women in Afghanistan are resilient. And time and time again, I think women in Afghanistan have shown the world that they're capable of so much. And with the limited time that they had to gain opportunities to break stereotypes, they went above and beyond, and they challenged Afghan norms. There are so many women in Afghanistan that helped shape the country. And now that’s over.

Every day, to be a woman in Afghanistan means that you're challenging your world. Your world is your family. Your world is the people that you work with. Your world is your neighbors and your community. You're challenging them to get access to your freedom. And even within my own family, a lot of the women weren't allowed to seek jobs in the beginning, but now, I know women in my family who are doctors and engineers and professors. And in that limited time that they had with freedoms, they were able to gain so much. And a lot of women are breadwinners for their family, if they're single. And I just hope and pray for all their safety. And I know that all of the world can use an Afghan woman because of how strong and dedicated they are to the cause of freedom and women's rights.