Agency Report
One after the other, quickly, carefully, keeping their heads down, a group of Afghan women step into a small Kabul apartment block — risking their lives as a nascent resistance against the Taliban.
They come together to plan their next stand against the hardline Islamist regime, which took back power in Afghanistan in August and stripped them of their dreams.
At first, there were no more than 15 activists in this group, mostly women in their 20s who already knew each other.
Now there is a network of dozens of women –- once students, teachers or NGO workers, as well as housewives -— that have worked in secret to organise protests over the past six months.
“I asked myself why not join them instead of staying at home, depressed, thinking of all that we lost,” a 20-year-old protester, who asked not to be named, tells AFP.
They know such a challenge to the new authorities may cost them everything: four of their comrades have already been seized.
But those that remain are determined to battle on.
When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they became notorious for human rights abuses, with women mostly confined to their homes.
Now back in government and despite promising softer rule, they are cracking down on women’s freedoms once again.
There is enforced segregation in most workplaces, leading many employers to fire female staff and women are barred from key public sector jobs.
Many girls’ secondary schools have closed, and university curriculums are being revised to reflect their hardline interpretation of Islam.
Haunted by memories of the last Taliban regime, some Afghan women are too frightened to venture out or are pressured by their families to remain at home.
For mother-of four Shala, who asked AFP to only use her first name, a return to such female confinement is her biggest fear.
A former government employee, her job has already been taken from her, so now she helps organise the resistance and sometimes sneaks out at night to paint graffiti slogans such as ‘Long Live Equality’ across the walls of the nation’s capital.
“I just want to be an example for young women, to show them that I will not give up the fight,” she explains.
The Taliban could harm her family, but Shala says her husband supports what she is doing and her children are learning from her defiance — at home they practise chants demanding education.
