Nushin, from a young prosecutor to persecuted by the Taliban

They have murdered three prosecutors and Nushin does not want to be the fourth.

That is why he has decided to hide as the criminals he was pursuing did until now.

Nushin, a nickname to avoid being identified, is 30 years old and a Hazara minority woman in an Afghanistan that the Taliban have renamed the Islamic Emirate.

The extremist Sunni ideology of this movement disparages women and the Shi'ism practiced by the Hazara, who represent around 8% of the population.

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Nushin assures that "the Taliban do not consider women as a human being the same as men, but they see them as an object, someone who takes care of housework and satisfies their lust."

This, in their opinion, explains why they not only exclude them from social life, but also interfere in their private life, how they should dress or who they can relate to.

These limitations make it impossible for you to work as a prosecutor.

"We have to be in contact with judges, criminals, injured both men and women, and the Taliban consider it a sin for women to have any kind of dealings with men, much less to intervene in trials," he says.

Hence, I have no hope that they will be allowed to return to work in the prosecution or court.

Remember August 15, when the fundamentalists entered Kabul, as "a terrible day."

“I arrived at the office at eight-something, and I immediately realized that things were not going well;

there were few women ”, he evokes.

His companions warned him to go home as soon as possible because the Taliban were entering the city.

"I was very scared, I knew what it meant," he says.

She asked a colleague to wait for her and accompany her, but he did not.

He also enlisted help from another who spoke Pashto (the first language among the Taliban) and had a car, but he slipped away.

"I looked out into the street and felt a lump in my throat, I was trembling with fear: everyone was trying to return to their homes, but there were no cars, only military vehicles."

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When she finally managed to get a taxi to take her home, the decision was made. That same night he abandoned his family and took refuge with some relatives. “I couldn't believe that the Taliban had come back to power after 20 years. He couldn't believe he was no longer free. I still live in great fear ”, he confides during a conversation on WhatsApp.

Your fear is not unfounded. Since then, the Taliban have murdered three of their colleagues in Kabul, Kandahar and Panshir without local media reporting. Nushin attributes this to the fact that the new regime "has greatly limited" the activity of the press, something confirmed by numerous Afghan journalists. “No one can report the murder of officials,” he assures, “I found out about these through other co-workers. The Taliban go from house to house looking for officials, ”she says, convinced that the situation is getting worse, something that makes her change her address frequently. "For me, they have looked for me in all the houses in the neighborhood where I have lived."

He does not believe the promises of the fundamentalists. "The Taliban lie. They say that they have decreed an amnesty, but in reality they have released the criminals from the prisons, ”he explains. That compounds the problems for Nushin who, like other fellow prosecutors, worked on murder cases linked to the militants and has already received threats. “I had to leave Kabul and live for a few months in Bamiyan. Now that these criminals are free and the Taliban are in power, I don't feel safe, ”she declares.

Nushin, who worked to pay for his law school at a private university, was able to pass the tests to be a prosecutor thanks to a preparation program organized and funded by the United States. But his happiness was buried in the difficulties of a deeply macho and discriminatory society towards minorities. "Nor was the work environment ideal before the arrival of the Taliban," he says.

She says that bosses and coworkers discriminated against her for being a woman. “They talked about my way of dressing, they said that women should stay at home. Our office also discriminated against us; for example, they purposely sent us to unsafe regions where we had no relatives, ”he says. In addition, they had fewer privileges: they did not receive the salary supplement that men received or when, in the face of increasing insecurity, they were given guns, they were denied them. "When we asked why, they told us that we were women and we did not know how to shoot," she adds.

Being a Hazara also added another ground for discrimination. "Almost every day I had to talk to my colleagues to convince them to do them like the rest of the Afghans we are citizens with the same rights," he explains. This community has made a lot of progress in the last two decades, especially in the academic field, which has facilitated its access to the civil service. "It is something new for the rest of the ethnic groups and they are reluctant to accept it," he admits.

But all those problems pale in the face of the return of the Taliban.

"In the last 20 years they have shown that they have not changed, only that now they are smarter than before, especially in their public relations," she declares, convinced that her moderate language only seeks to gain the trust of the international community.

"They need the credits and they want to benefit from humanitarian aid," he stresses.

For this reason, he asks that they not be recognized and that assistance to the Afghan people be done "directly, without going through the hands of the Taliban."

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