International reporting
Afghanistan: Women with shattered destiny envision the worst
Audio 02:28
In Kabul, the Afghan women who remained there live in fear of the Taliban.
© AP/Rahmat Gul
By: Clea Broadhurst Follow
6 mins
Since the Taliban took power a year ago, the condition of women in the country has steadily worsened.
Deprived of work, deprived of schools, women in Afghanistan are paying the heavy price of the change of government.
Afghanistan is one of the few countries where the suicide rate for women is higher than for men.
Over the past year, there has been a marked increase in suicides across the country.
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From our special correspondent in Herat,
At a medical office in Herat, western Afghanistan, Nafisa*, who was a teacher until last year, comes to see Ali, a psychologist, for the fourth time.
She is one of many women who have had to give up their jobs since the Taliban took over the country.
“
This situation is terrible
,” she confides to us, clenching her hands.
“
I'm waiting for the next war, you know
”.
Since the "change of situation", as the Afghans say, the young woman of 23 years is no longer the same.
“
I'm scared, I'm sweating all over my body, I'm constantly stressed.
I feel like crazy.
I'm always afraid that someone will come looking for me to hurt me.
We moved, I threw away my SIM cards
,” she confesses.
What she describes, she experiences daily.
“
I broke all the ties I had with my colleagues, I feel isolated.
I think we are pushed to commit suicide if we do not accept this situation.
If ever I have no chance of leaving the country, my only option will be death
”
► To read also:
Afghanistan: a demonstration of women dispersed by Taliban fire in Kabul
Shattered Fates
These suicidal thoughts, more and more of them are having them.
Fatima is 15 years old and she has already tried twice to end her life.
“
Schools have closed for girls.
Since then, I feel like in prison, I feel oppressed
, ”says the young girl.
“
I'm scared and I think terrible things, I worry about my life, my future.
If I can't go very far from here, I want to kill myself,
” she says, her voice frail
.
“Sometimes I want to throw myself under the wheels of a car
”.
Without being able to go to school, she no longer sees her friends, she can no longer share what she feels, she tells us.
“
We girls have no hope because we no longer have a role in society.
Unfortunately, women in Afghanistan have no value
”.
Fatima wanted to become a judge.
But today, she has no hope that her dream will come true.
Fariba, her 41-year-old mother, is afraid for her daughter, especially since she understands very well the situation in which she finds herself.
“
Under the previous regime, women were not afraid.
But I remember the Taliban government before
(the Taliban were in power between 1996 and 2001, editor's note)
, for five years, I was not allowed to work, I had to stay at home.
They wasted five years of my life
”
Fariba is a volunteer in a hospital in Herat.
Since she was separated from her husband, she lives with her brother, with her daughter and her two boys.
Deprived of television and radio, going to the hospital is his only escape.
She sometimes takes her daughter with her, so that she can get out of the house a bit.
“I see my daughter crying every day and I know why.
She wants to be alone, she doesn't want to see anyone, she gets angry over nothing.
She ended up swallowing medication, it was so bad”
►
Also to listen
: Women in Afghanistan: return to hell under the yoke of the Taliban
Suicides on the rise
According to the psychologist, impossible to give precise figures, because the statistics are wrong: he explains that the Taliban do not let doctors register suicide cases, because they do not want the world to know that the suicide rate is skyrocketing in the country.
But he asserts that more and more women are coming to see him, either because they are thinking about it, or because they have already tried it and their families want them to talk to a professional about it.
“The number of patients with mental problems has increased, especially women who have attempted suicide.
In other countries, when you want to be healthy, the government and the family provide support, women often have jobs and there is no forced marriage.
In Afghanistan, tensions are often linked to sexual violence in the home, which is one of the reasons why suicide cases are increasing”.
Ali points out that many factors cause women to fall into depression: no longer being able to work, fear for the future of their daughters, domestic violence.
It sometimes takes a few consultations for the women to really confide, he says, because during the first visits, relatives are often present, not allowing them to open up discreetly.
► To read also: Afghanistan, women suffer forced marriages and abusive imprisonment, according to Amnesty
Unimaginable choices
The environment in which women evolve has become more threatening for young girls.
Since the Taliban came to power, many local and international NGOs have seen an upsurge in child marriages, early marriages and forced marriages in Afghanistan.
One of the factors behind this increase is the economic and humanitarian crisis.
A sick dependent boy, Mubarak, a mother in her thirties, wants to sell her ten-year-old daughter.
“
I want to use the money I will get from selling it, for my son.
The husband we found for her is deaf.
But we have no choice.
We have to sacrifice her to be able to take our son to see a doctor in Kabul or Pakistan
,” she confides.
She has no choice, she says, he is her only son.
“
I love my son so much.
It is very important.
The boys study, they go to work in Iran and send money to their families who can then have a comfortable life.
Girls, they belong to others.
They go to live with their husbands
,” she tells us.
► To read also: Afghanistan: one year after the return of the Taliban, the increasingly bleak horizon of women
She is not the only one to have taken this unimaginable decision, sometimes to obtain ridiculous sums.
Rabia gave her 12-year-old daughter in marriage to repay the 50,000 Afghanis (about 550 euros) borrowed from a 40-year-old man.
“
I'm not happy that I did, she's not ready to get pregnant or take care of a house.
I made this decision because we were starving, for my other children
,” she confesses.
Loss of fundamental landmarks, extreme poverty, broken destinies, these are factors that push women to imagine the worst.
One of the only hopes that some of them harbor today is to one day be able to leave the country in which they cannot flourish.
*All names have been changed for security reasons.
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Afghanistan
Womens rights
Health and medicine
Taliban