New Delhi: “I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family. I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me,” Zarifa Ghafari, Afghanistan’s first and youngest female mayor, said after the militant group took complete control of the country on Sunday (August 17). As senior members of the Ashraf Ghani-led government managed to flee, a 27-year-old Zarifa Ghafari wondered, Where would I go?
Zarifa Ghafari made history in 2018 by becoming Afghanistan’s first female mayor. As the Taliban insurgents sweeped across Afghanistan in a matter of days and seize territory they did not already control, Ghafari today is sitting at her home, waiting for the Taliban to come and kill and others like her finally.
In the past, she had received death threats from the Taliban. According to reports, her father General Abdul Wasi Ghafari was gunned down by the militants on November 15, 2020, just 20 days after the third attempt to kill her failed.
In March 2020, the Trump administration presented her with the International Women of Courage Award, during which she warned that Afghan women are ‘always worried for the future’ since they ‘have not forgotten the Taliban’s reign.’
However, she, like other women who have managed to break free, is now frightened about the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
The Taliban, who largely hail from Afghanistan’s conservative countryside, have signaled moderation in recent days, offering amnesty to those who fought them, inviting women to return to work and pledging to restore normal life after decades of war. But many Afghans, particularly women, remain deeply skeptical of the group’s intentions. Whether or not the Taliban have truly changed, the country they now rule is light years ahead of the one they captured in 1996 after four years of civil war following the Soviet withdrawal and the 1992 collapse of a pro-communist government.
Then the city was in ruins, ravaged by warlords who would later ally with the U.S. Most Afghans traveled Kabul’s rutted roads by bicycle or in beat-up yellow taxis. There was only one computer in the entire country, and it belonged to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive leader, who did not know how to turn it on.
Under Taliban rule, television and music were forbidden. Women were barred from attending school or working outside the home, and had to wear the all-encompassing burqa whenever they appeared in public.
