Enlarge image
This family left their home in Kunduz after the Taliban took over rule there.
Now she is holding out in a park in Kabul.
Photo:
Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
No, it couldn't be, it just couldn't be true. I checked my cell phone on the morning of August 15th, safe in the country I am in now. In Afghanistan it was already afternoon. The Taliban have reached Kabul, it said. The president and his entire team have already gone into hiding. At that moment, and as a woman who calls Kabul home, I wish nothing more than that this news was fake news or propaganda. But all of this, this nightmare that's happening in Kabul, is real.
It is important to say at this point that I live in Kabul, there are people I love there, my apartment has been there for decades.
But purely by chance - or should I say: fortunately?
- I'm not in the country right now.
I wanted to visit my daughter who lives far away from Afghanistan.
Where exactly is not supposed to be stated here for security reasons.
I'm not where the hell is happening right now.
I checked the phone again.
The Taliban had now advanced further into the city, they had reached the presidential palace, they posed there, took selfies with their smartphones.
A disgusting sight.
I gathered all my strength and called women in Kabul I know.
For example a friend who is supposed to be called Nadira here.
Nadira is a police officer.
She couldn't speak at first, she was so shocked.
She said she didn't know what to do with herself and her thoughts.
The Taliban are moderate - but what does that mean?
She said, “I have learned, studied, and tried so much to be a good citizen of this country.
I wanted to guide my fellow citizens, the many great women in Afghanistan, as police officers.
Be a role model for the girls.
But now I can't even protect myself.
And nobody helps me. "
All of Nadira's pain and suffering could be clearly felt over the phone, over thousands of kilometers.
I told her, “Don't be afraid.
Don't panic. ”But how can you reassure a policewoman when she and I, we both know, that the Taliban brutally murdered policewomen again just a few weeks ago?
The Taliban say they have changed.
You are moderate.
They say they have learned from their mistakes.
But what do you mean by that exactly?
How do you imagine Afghan society of the future, like the lives of women and girls?
The columns of Sima Samar
Kabul Diary: »Women ran out of the houses with newborn babies, barefoot, so quickly the violence came over the city« A column by Sima Samar
Kabul Diary: School is a life-threatening place for girlsA column by Sima Samar
Kabul Diary: "Then we women cannot be sure whether we will return alive when we leave the house" A column by Sima Samar
If the Taliban are serious about any of these promises, they must build trust in society, especially that of women.
It will be difficult.
They have already done too much cruelty to the Afghans.
The Taliban should accept that women play a major role in any society, that they should not be excluded from it.
Disenfranchised, locked in the apartments.
With no powers, no freedoms, no real life.
The bloodshed must end!
The Taliban are not allowed to turn the country I love into a cemetery again.
Where is the international community now?
The scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in the past few days say it all.
They show how little the people in Afghanistan trust the Taliban and their alleged new goals.
The people who clung to the planes like a baby to its mother, who accepted death, are hopeless.
None of these people believe the Taliban.
Each of these lost lives breaks the heart of a father, mother, sister, daughter.
We know dying, we remember the many who are dead because of the Taliban, who would actually still be alive.
We all don't want to go back to this pointless dying.
We are all terrified.
Over the past 20 years, like many others, I have campaigned for human and women's rights in Afghanistan.
We fought for women and girls to have equal rights.
In schools, in politics, in professions, in men's minds.
As much as I wanted democracy to last in Afghanistan - over the past few decades I have always been afraid that this newly created system will collapse.
Corruption, nepotism and mismanagement have always been the biggest problems in this country.
Democracy in Afghanistan was very new, still weak, still inexperienced.
The presidents little willing to enter into dialogue, self-centered.
And they did not trust their own agency.
This becomes painfully clear in the speed and defenselessness with which they have now left the field to the Taliban.
What does all this mean for the people in Afghanistan now?
What are the Taliban up to?
I ask myself that, and now many ask me that.
I can't give an answer.
Everything I know about these men must scare me.
I know how the Taliban deal with those who work for a freer society.
They are their greatest enemies.
Where is the international community that has talked so much about equality between men and women in Afghanistan and about peace?
Where are you now?
Editing and translation: Maria Stöhr
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