The Taliban harass Afghan university students in their homes to force them into marriage: "They threw my father like an animal"

Fawzia is 17 years old and for almost a month she has been living semi-hidden in a hovel in her neighborhood of Kabul.

The life of this teenager, who is also hiding under a false name, turned upside down on December 20, when the Taliban forbade Afghans from studying at the university.

That day, she explains in a video call from the Afghan capital, the college where she was studying her first year —Medicine—, she summoned her for a surprise exam.

The date soon turned into a trap when the young woman realized that in the class "there were only girls".

Girls and Taliban.

After notifying the students that they were forbidden to continue studying, the fundamentalists "began to choose the students they liked, including me, and they told us that we had to marry them," recalls the university student.

The teenager managed to slip away and return home,

The young woman believes that the Taliban knew her address from the information she herself gave when enrolling in the university.

She then tells that other university students in her class have fled or "are missing."

Khadija Amin, an Afghan journalist exiled in Spain, who also participates in the video call, corroborates this and affirms that "the Taliban are using the lists of university students, which include their personal data, to go look for them at their homes."

Amin supports her claim with the accounts of other Afghans, which she describes as similar to Fawzia's.

Several women receive training in a classroom of a police station, in November in Kabul.DPA via Europa Press (DPA via Europa Press)

“The Taliban have even given Afghan families a form in which they must specify how many daughters they have and what ages, but the university records provide them with the names, ages and addresses of many girls, without the need for them. ask anything”, explains this journalist, formerly a well-known Afghan television presenter.

Amin had to flee her country in 2021, leaving her three children behind her, as her ex-husband prevented him from taking them with her at the last moment.

The first time the Taliban tried to drag Fawzia out of her home, they failed.

Her father got in the way and prevented them from taking her away, at the cost of receiving a beating.

In the struggle, the girl injured her leg.

A few days later, the militiamen returned.

Seeing them arrive, her mother managed to rush her out of the house and hide her before the men managed to enter.

After her, the Taliban interrogated her and when she refused to reveal the whereabouts of her daughter, they took him with them.

A week later, her broken body, in a coma, was dumped by the back gate of the property.

"Like an animal," describes the teenager.

The student sends a photo of her father, a 37-year-old teacher, via WhatsApp.

In the image, a young man is seen in a hospital room, connected to an artificial respirator that provides him with oxygen through a tracheostomy.

His upper chest and sternum appear to be caved in and his skull is bandaged.

Doctors have told the family that he probably will not survive.

Nor has the child that the mother of the adolescent, eight months pregnant, expected.

The woman was also beaten up by the Taliban.

Fawzia's family has videotaped from a window the militiamen surrounding the house and beating her mother.

In the footage, shaggy, bearded men in the usual Taliban look and attire are posted in front of the house alongside a white SUV.

A few days ago, those men forced their way into the house again and questioned the family, explains the teenager's mother, in the same video call.

This Afghan woman recounts that she reiterated that her daughter was not at home and that then the Taliban hit her in her womb, causing a hemorrhage that killed her fetus, she explains without stopping crying.

Being so far along in her pregnancy, she had to give birth to her dead son.

This newspaper has accessed a photograph of her corpse, which appears shrouded on a red carpet,

The young woman, her mother and her three brothers, ages 16, 11 and 6, have already resigned themselves to fleeing, leaving their father in a coma behind, but they have a very difficult time.

The Taliban surround her home, but even if they manage to escape their surveillance, to travel they need the company of a male guardian, the

, who must be a very close adult male relative.

Also, her mother is still not on her feet.

Flight

Escape seems, however, his only option to save Fawzia, not only from the Taliban, but also from the cold.

The hideout where the teenager takes refuge is partially out in the open, in Kabul it is snowing and the temperatures these days have dropped to -20 degrees.

The student also has suicidal ideas because she blames herself for the fate of her father and her unborn brother.

This adolescent with childish features begs for "someone" to help her family.

In August, a young Afghan woman who identified herself as Elaha Dilwaziri denounced in several videos on Twitter that she had been raped and forced to marry Qari Saeed Khosty, a former spokesperson for the Taliban Ministry of the Interior, whose owner is Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani Network. , a militia that enjoys autonomy within the Taliban and which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.

Three Afghan female students walk near the University of Kabul, on December 21. ALI KHARA (REUTERS)

A few weeks after the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, the fundamentalists released a directive ordering women over the age of 20 and widows under the age of 35 to marry their militiamen “for strengthen Islamic morality.

In that letter, Afghans were urged to marry female students over the age of 18 “before the start of universities and schools” in order to ensure that supposed Islamic decorum.

According to Khadija Amin, the Taliban are not limited to women over the age of 18.

"They are forcing girls of 15, 14 and even 12 years old to marry them," he says.

From precisely that age, 12 years, Afghans have closed the doors of educational centers.

As soon as they came to power, the fundamentalists had closed girls' secondary schools many months before banning college for female students on December 20 and banning all women from working in NGOs four days later.

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