The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan one year ago today Synthe Nation
into yet another spiral of turmoil. Chaotic withdrawal by the U.
S and NATO allies triggered a frenzied and disastrous evacuation
as tens of thousands of desperate and fearful Afghans swarmed Kabul's
international airport.
In an attempt to escape.
Taliban claimed to be different this time making tall promises of
an open, inclusive Islamic government. Over the coming days. We'll
look at the Afghanistan left behind under Taliban rule. One year
on We begin with the plight of Afghan women and girls who've had
their freedom snatched away once again put under the Taliban's harsh
rule.
Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports.
I remember that day I woke up and I was about to go to the, uh, mathematics
institute that I was going because I was trying to take the entry
exam for universities. And I wasn't any women and girls in Afghanistan
August 15th is a day impossible to forget, especially for those like
this girl who dreamed of an education.
A career. I was really interested to, Uh, just one day work at the
United Nations, and that was my biggest dream were hiding her identity
for her safety.
When the Taliban took over the country a year ago, they promised
women and girls' rights would be respected, a promise unfulfilled
to this day.
A recent in depth investigation by Amnesty International has documented
the devastating collapse in women's rights under the Taliban. The
scope, magnitude and severity of the Taliban's violations against
women and girls are increasing month by month. It states within a
year of its takeover of Afghanistan. The group's draconian policies
are depriving millions of women and girls of the opportunity to lead
safe, free and fulfilling lives.
They are being sentenced as one Afghan woman put it to death in slow
motion.
Girls over 14 continue to be banned from public school. Younger girls
can still attend, but few have a realistic career ahead. Women have
been forced from the workplace and some are arbitrarily detained
and tortured in prison if they break the rules for something even
as simple as leaving their homes without a male guardian.
And so these women would just go out sometimes just to the shop or
go out to have a coffee and suddenly there in a detention center.
What they're facing the detention center. What we heard from these
prison staff members and then to women as well, who've been detained
for these charges is that they're facing torture, including solitary
confinement.
Um, they're also facing regular beating and detention. Nicolette
Waldman is the author of the report. She and her team conducted dozens
of interviews with women and girls across Afghanistan heard the story
of one woman who was actually brought in with her newborns. Um she
was breastfeeding the newborn at the time as a punishment for for
this more moral corruption charge.
Um, She was separated from that child and wasn't able to breast feed
that child in solitary confinement. So just to go out to the shops,
you might end up in prison, and I think this is something of intimidation
is a form of intimidation. So it's working. It's definitely working,
you know?
Young women We spoke with said they saw Taliban brutality up close
in the months following their takeover. They were just beating a
girl, a young girl. I think she was my age and they were
Just beating her so wirelessly, although she had full her job on
and there wasn't apparently anything wrong with her appearance, it
was even hard to watch. Many others like her have watched things
over the past year. They should never have had to your country all
the things that you've been working for all the things that you're
duration of. We working for
They're shattering and they're falling apart.
And it was very painful for me and for him from my generation because
we had worked a lot.
Sorry.
The emotional toll on her and her friends is massive after 40 years
of war, Yet another generation has been left traumatized.
A. I feel like I mentally destroyed. I don't have any motivation
anymore. I'm not inspired to study or to do something creative like
I used to feel like the staying of human sleeping.
More often, like it wasn't like the way I was.
I got dark depression twice. Must have been very tough like her.
Every girl we spoke with told us of the mental health battles they
are now forced to fight
the toughest year of my life. It is the worst feeling I would say,
like not being able to do you study and to be deprived of you were
rightist education. It is the word first feeling is undescribable
inwards and
Is really setting to be to have not clear vision, fewer future.
Whilst you have had lots of dreams to beef fulfill
your dreams.
What did you want to do?
I just wanted to be involved in politics and something that is impossible
in today's Afghanistan. I wanted to take you at least
Diploma. I really had that passion to be involved in politics since
I was very young for some of her friends. Life is literally unbearable.
Tried to commit suicide because they got depression, like be at home
46 home months. I asked one of them and she told me that she had
no wish to is doing because they kind of stressed she had was.
Overwhelming.
The Taliban have come down hardest on the women who dare to protest
in the streets for their rights
and holding them in prison for days of beatings. Incredibly, many
still refused to quit. On Saturday, Women protested in Kabul, defying
Taliban gunmen
not giving up.
And I think that was something that was so interesting from the interviews
was this sense of real sadness, despair. But just with that, a sense
that they will. They will keep fighting. They will at any cost. A
lot of them feel they have nothing to lose. So they would say, You
know, we we realized all the risks that we were facing out out in
the streets to protest.
So we came inside. But then when we came inside, we realized we were
just dying every second of the day. So we thought we had to go out
and just live and and and live our lives and show how much this means
to us. What did these women want? The White House, the Pentagon,
the EU to do what we think what you have to call for an action that's
going to put
Influence the Taliban but not harm the Afghan people. What we think
could do that would be targeted sanctions
or travel bans for specific members of the Taliban, who are involved
in the systematic discrimination against women and girls. Until there
is enough pressure on the Taliban to change women will have to endure
working hard to believe things will get better. In this year, I realized
that how emotionally
Actually for a child. I was because I was thinking, Oh, yeah, I can
struggle with things and, um, I'm strong enough. But this year, I
realized that I'm really vulnerable to this mental pressures that
it has for me. And, uh, I think that was a beautiful thing because
this vulnerability they told me so many things, and I think I'm stronger
than the year before. I I just feel stronger and much more committed.
To my dreams right now. Do you still believe in that dream? Do you
think that you can still make that work? I have never stopped believing
in my in my dreams and myself, But right now the difference is that
I see a lot of challenges and more uncertainty than before 20 Million
Afghan women are now entering a second year under Taliban rule.
Their rights continue to be denied and stolen brazenly in full view
of the world.