Glenwood (United States) (AFP)

Responding to black with color: It was when she saw the images of women wearing the niqab during a demonstration in support of the Taliban in Kabul that Bahar Jalali decided to launch a campaign to publicize traditional Afghan dresses, shimmering and full of life.

The academic born in Afghanistan then launched on social networks the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes (Do not touch my clothes, in English) to protest against the black full veil imposed by the Taliban on Afghan students.

"I was very concerned that the world might think that the garment worn by these women in Kabul is the traditional Afghan dress," she told AFP at her home in Glenwood, Md., Referring at the protest held earlier this month.

"Afghan women don't dress like that. Afghan women wear colorful dresses that we have shown to the world," especially on Twitter, she adds.

In its wake, many Afghan women indeed publish photos of them wearing bright and multicolored dresses, green, yellow, orange or red, flooding social networks with the famous embroidery of their country.

Afghan women in black niqab, white Taliban flag in hand, during a pro-Taliban rally on September 11, 2021 at Shaheed Rabbani University in Kabul Aamir QURESHI AFP / Archives

Bahar Jalali, 56, emigrated as a child to the United States.

She returned to Afghanistan in 2009 to teach history and gender studies (which explores social relations between the sexes) at the American University in Kabul - the first such program in Afghanistan.

She is now a teacher at Loyola University in Maryland.

"I want these colorful dresses to eclipse" the black of the niqab, "I want people to remember it as (...) the face of Afghan culture," she insists.

Bahar Jalali is now worried about his former students "stuck in Afghanistan", of whom "many are afraid for their lives".

Bahar Jalali consults her Twitter account, at her home in Glenwood, September 24, 2021 in Maryland SAUL LOEB AFP

“My students are passionate about gender equality, whether male or female. So I really don't know how this new generation, who never lived under the rule of the Taliban, who grew up in a society open and free, will be able to adapt to this dark period, "she said.

But it is also because these young people have tasted freedom that Ms. Jalali believes that the new masters of Afghanistan will find obstacles in their way.

Afghan society is "different from what it was the last time the Taliban ruled the country. Many women earn their living, are heads of families," she said.

Bahar Jalali shows a photo of her younger on September 24, 2021 in Glenwood, MD SAUL LOEB AFP

"It will be extremely difficult for the Taliban to impose this iron hand on the Afghan population, as they had done before", she wants to believe.

© 2021 AFP