The Taliban is back — Afghan women are scared, but defiant
KABUL, Afghanistan — Sometimes their words tumble out like the frantic beating of wings. The tears often flow, but now and then, an eye flashes with a glint of determination.
Two months after the Taliban takeover of their country, Afghan women and girls inhabit a world transformed. The freedoms and expectations many have come to prize are vanishing as the militant group’s return to power after two decades has stirred profound sorrow over losses that may prove irredeemable.
“We are back where we started,” said Naheed Samadi Bahram, U.S. country director of Women for Afghan Women, a rights-advocacy group. “It’s very heartbreaking, and very hard.”
A generation of Afghan girls grew up having never known the lash of Taliban rule. The fundamentalist movement was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion launched in answer to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ending the group’s five-year reign. But their black-and-white flags again fly over the capital. Their fighters patrol the markets; their preachers thunder in the mosques.
Young women largely barred from school or jobs describe the nightmarish sensation of their mothers’ tales suddenly unfolding in real life. What was once said aloud is now whispered or not spoken at all. And for those of an age to have firsthand recollections of the Taliban’s cruelty, any moment of any day can feel like an old wound, opened anew.
The new Taliban era is playing out in different ways across disparate parts of this nation. Particularly in the countryside, elements of the Taliban’s harsh
