My dear GFPs, I hope you’ll forgive me for breaking from standard procedure and writing to you on a Friday. Your usual Invisible Women newsletter will still come on Monday as usual.
GFPs, I wanted to try to write something about Afghanistan and what is happening there, but my voice and my words are inadequate. I feel, as I'm sure so many of us do, helpless and horrified in the face of stories like this, where the ex captain of Afghanistan's women's football team tells female footballers to burn their kits and delete their photos.
“Today I’m calling them and telling them, take down their names, remove their identities, take down their photos for their safety. Even I’m telling them to burn down or get rid of your national team uniform,” she said.
“And that is painful for me, for someone as an activist who stood up and did everything possible to achieve and earn that identity as a women’s national team player.
Or this story about how some (and where are the rest of them?) of the all-girls robotics team who made global headlines for the low-cost ventilator they made using old car parts have fled to Qatar
"Unfortunately, what's been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has literally been going from door to door and taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides," Motley said. "We are very, very concerned of that happening with this Afghan Girls Robotics Team, these girls that want to be engineers, they want to be in the AI community. They dare to dream, to succeed."
Or this account of a doctor who was dragged from the taxi she was using to get to work and publicly flogged
Dr. Zuhal used to drive herself to work.
This week, she started taking a taxi to avoid reprisals from the Taliban, who once banned women from driving. It didn’t help. On the second day of the Taliban takeover, a Taliban gunman dragged the doctor, who didn’t want to use her full name, out of the taxi and whipped her for filming the chaos surrounding the evacuations at the Kabul airport through her window.
“I cried the whole way home,” she said.
Or this account from a female journalist
a prominent anchorwoman on state television, Khadija Amin, tearfully told a Clubhouse chat room that the Taliban had suspended her, and other women employees, indefinitely.
“I am a journalist and I am not allowed to work,” said Ms. Amin, 28. “What will I do next? The next generation will have nothing, everything we have achieved for 20 years will be gone. The Taliban is the Taliban. They have not changed.”
Or almost most chilling of all, this account from a female student in Kabul
the men standing around were making fun of girls and women, laughing at our terror. “Go and put on your chadari [burqa],” one called out. “It is your last days of being out on the streets,” said another. “I will marry four of you in one day,” said a third.
It is hard to feel anything but despair in the face of such stories. How quickly rights which have taken decades to fight for, can be simply stripped away. And that while some men may ally with the women of their country, others will simply laugh. Others still will take their jobs. Beat them. Kill them.
And yet, incredibly, some women are not giving in to despair. Some women are fighting.
These women are protesting outside the Presidential Palace in Kabul (click to view video)
From the HuffPost write-up
According to Al Jazeera correspondent Hameed Mohd Shah, the women were chanting: “Taliban: We want our rights, here are women, we want social security, the ban on work, the right to education, and the right to political participation.
“No force can ignore and stifle women.
“All our achievements over the years should not be compromised [nor] our basic rights.”
These female politicians are refusing to go into hiding
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Raised as a refugee in Iran, Mazari said she returned to Afghanistan to serve her country. About 600 locals, including farmers, shepherds and laborers, have joined Mazari's resistance.
This student and director of an education charity doesn't intend to give up
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This is as much my country as it is theirs and we need to talk. How many more people need to leave for them to understand that they cannot run the country like this, underdeveloped and with poor infrastructure? If they don’t listen, we will run underground schools, we will run underground radios. They fight, we fight.
It’s a lot of pressure, but I have to cope. You go through so much that at some point you just get used to it. Tomorrow I will get up and do it all again.
These girls intend to carry on studying no matter what
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What pulls her back from the brink of despair is the march of women to preserve and expand their rights, she said.
“The more you oppress women, the harder women will try to fight back,” Safia said. “We are ready to fight.”
These women are leading protests on Afghan Independence Day (click to view video)
The bravery of all these women is astounding. We must support them. Here is a round-up of links to ways you can do so.
Women for Afghan Women - 20 Years of Afghan Women Strong — womenforafghanwomen.networkforgood.com Your support will help us provide safety and support to thousands, as we have done for the past two decades As we speak to you, right now, the devastating crisis in Afghanistan has forced nearly 400,000 Afghans—including thousands of our clients, staff, and their families—to flee their homes, towns, and provinces seeking safer refuge. Women for Afghan W...
Petition · Pres. Biden and Congress: Ensure Afghan women’s rights alongside peace with the Taliban · Change.org — www.change.org My name is Nahid Fattahi and I know what’s it like to be marginalized and traumatized because of my gender. I am deeply worried that unless the global community comes together, the lives of so many women in Afghanistan will be at risk. And I’m here begging the world to join me in calling on the American government to #SafeguardAfghanWomenRights and #StandWithAfghanWomen In the past 19 years, Afgha
Petition · Protect the freedom and safety of Afghan women and girls · Change.org — www.change.org The lives and freedoms of women and girls are in the balance as the Taliban takes power in Afghanistan. Under Taliban rules, women and girls are banned from studying, working, showing their skin in public, accessing healthcare, being involved in politics or speaking publicly. Sexual violence and forced marriage to Taliban fighters is common. We therefore ask the UK government, as G7 Chair and key
See you on Monday xoxo
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