Harriet Logan

In a tiny box of a room with no windows to keep out the freezing winter air sits Nazrin and her nine year old son Bashir. Tears pour down Nazrin’s face as she explains what has happened to her and her son since the Taliban took control of Kabul one and a half years ago. Before they arrived she taught in the Polytechnic where she was also provided with a staff apartment. Overnight her life changed.

Under the Taliban, women have been forbidden from work. They must not leave their homes unless covered in the all enveloping Burque which leaves a small piece of mesh across the eyes to enable the wearer to see. Women should not wear shoes which are either high heeled or that make any noise in case of attracting the attention of men and they are forbidden absolutely from talking to men in public places unless they are married.

Education for girls has been stopped and in an attempt to carry on teaching, illegal schools have been started in peoples homes where it is not uncommon to find up to twenty little girls learning to read and write. The punishments bestowed on the children, their families and more so, their teachers if they are found are extreme, the Taliban favour steel cables to beat people with. The little girls in these classrooms must sneak in and out of the buildings which house their schools and must lie about what they have done in the day for fear of Taliban retribution.

Suicide rates among women have risen dramatically as women driven by extreme poverty are forced to take their lives and sometimes those of their children. In a country where 60 per cent of the population is female due to the many years of fighting, many families have depended on their mothers to support them. That support system has now been denied and the women begging on the frozen Kabul streets or searching in the drains for weeds to eat attest to this

Health care facility have fallen dramatically for women in Taliban controlled areas with many hospitals for women being shut down altogether. The Taliban have taken the view that Gynaecology is a subject of amusement and embarrassment rather than necessity for women and try not to address the need for it.

Beatings on women by Taliban or their religious police is common place and there is a tangible feeling of fear in Taliban controlled areas such as Kabul. There are reports of women having their lips cut off for wearing make-up.

It is illegal to photograph any living being in Taliban areas and so the risk these women took in allowing pictures to be made of them is enormous but they did so in the belief that their stories should be told.

In Jalalabad, Anisa spits when she talks of the Taliban, They are inhuman, they are like wild animals she says The rest of the world is moving forward and we are moving back.

Harriet Logan, February 1998