FAR FROM HOME

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Rukhshana Media, an Afghan women’s media organization

When the Taliban walked into the capital of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, America’s longest war came to an end. The vacuum left by the exit of U.S. troops forced tens of thousands of Afghans to flee. Some were evacuated by Western nations. Others escaped on foot. For many Afghan women, the Taliban takeover spelled the end of the freedoms they had enjoyed for two decades.

One year on, thousands of women are scattered across the world. For this project, a global team of female journalists and photographers spent time with eight individuals who are building new lives, from the beaches of Florida to the suburbs of Dublin.

Starting anew has not been easy. They ache for their homeland and their loved ones, unsure when they will see them again beyond their cell-phone screens. At night, they often return to Afghanistan in their dreams. They are wrestling with new identities, spending their days learning new languages and exchanging their Afghan air force uniforms for restaurant aprons.

OVER THE PAST 20 years, U.S. officials often defended the war as an effort to improve the lives of Afghan women and girls. There were real successes: around half of Afghan girls—some 4 million children—entered elementary school, compared with almost none two decades earlier; women filled university hallways, joined the medical profession, traveled freely across the country, and entered nearly every aspect of public life, becoming lawmakers, judges, governors, and police officers. An all-female robotics team garnered global fame. Afghan female athletes became Olympians.

In a country where nearly two-thirds of the population is under 25 years old, members of Afghanistan’s young generation particularly flourished during the U.S. and NATO’s war against the Taliban, which had ruled the country in the late 1990s before being ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001. The international community encouraged women to chase their dreams, be emboldened by the end of the repressive rule many of those same women had known as children.

When the final U.S. troops withdrew in a chaotic exit last summer, Afghan women saw their hard-won gains evaporate overnight. Despite promising to honor women’s rights “within Islam,” the Taliban has intensified its crackdowns—just as Afghan activists had long warned.

The Taliban has banned high school for girls,