By Somaia Walizadeh and Sabine Küper-Büsch
More than four years after the Taliban seized power, repression against women in Afghanistan has not eased — it has hardened into a system. While international attention shifts elsewhere, Afghan women are subjected to a coordinated policy of exclusion, intimidation, and terror. This violence is no longer exceptional; it has become routine. And that is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
Kite Runner is a network of Afghan women journalists and activists in exile. Created after August 2021, the platform documents human rights violations and provides a rare space where survivors can speak in their own voices. Members meet weekly online, connecting women inside Afghanistan with those forced into exile across Europe, North America, and South Asia.
The testimonies were shared during sessions of our Women’s Group, a protected space for peer support, in 2024 and 2025. The women now live in exile, their lives still deeply shaped by torture and persecution. They speak not only for themselves, but for thousands of women who continue to suffer inside Afghanistan.
From repression to policy
The Taliban describe Afghanistan as an “Islamic Emirate.” In practice, their rule has evolved into a system that systematically removes women from public life. Girls are banned from secondary schools and universities, women are excluded from most professions, and even movement outside the home is tightly restricted.
Internationally, Taliban representatives insist these measures are temporary or culturally specific. On the ground, activists see something else: a deliberate strategy to break women’s resistance.
Peaceful protests by women—often small, spontaneous and symbolic—have been criminalised. Arrests, enforced disappearances and intimidation are not side effects of Taliban rule; they are tools of governance.
Zarifa Yaqoubi: Forced silence as political control
Zarifa Yaqoubi, a member of the Afghan Women’s Movement for Equality, was arrested in November 2022 after participating in street protests against the education bans. She was detained for five weeks.
Her testimony reveals how repression functions psychologically as well as physically. Blindfolded, deprived of hygiene and food, interrogated at night, she was repeatedly accused of acting on behalf of foreign powers. The goal was not information—it was submission.
Eventually, Yaqoubi was forced to record a public “confession” renouncing protest. Such videos serve a dual purpose: humiliating the activist and warning others. Even after her release, surveillance and threats continued. When she was arrested again weeks later, she understood the message and fled the country.
Her case illustrates how the Taliban suppress dissent not only through imprisonment, but through lasting fear.
Neda Parwani: Collective punishment and gendered violence
The arrest of women’s rights defender Neda Parwani in September 2023 marks another escalation: family detention. Parwani, her husband, and their young son were taken from their home at night.
During her detention, Parwani was subjected to beatings, sexualized humiliation, and filmed interrogations—while her child’s cries could be heard. The presence of the child was not incidental; it was a weapon.
Such practices violate international law, but under Taliban rule, there is no accountability. Filmed abuse becomes a permanent threat, extending punishment beyond the prison walls. Parwani’s fear that these recordings could be released online remains a form of ongoing torture.
Her husband later described how their son panics at the sight of men dressed like Taliban fighters—evidence of how repression shapes the next generation.
Lailuma Devletzi: Extreme Violence Beyond Kabul
In provinces like Herat, repression is often harsher and less visible. Lailuma Devletzi was arrested in 2022 after being denounced under torture by former students. Her detention involved repeated sexual violence, mutilation and deliberate infection of wounds.
Her survival depended on a bribe and an escape to Iran. Only by chance did she receive medical help and later recognition as a UN asylum case. Many others do not.
Her testimony highlights a crucial point: the violence is not random. It targets politically active women, aims to erase their public presence, and relies on silence to continue.
International normalization and political failure
Despite this reality, Taliban representatives are increasingly treated as legitimate interlocutors. Diplomatic meetings, negotiations, and de facto recognition continue—often without women at the table.
For activists, this is experienced as betrayal. The 2020 Doha agreement and the 2021 withdrawal of international troops signaled to the Taliban that strategic interests would outweigh human rights. Since then, repression has intensified, not softened.
The absence of international recognition of gender apartheid as a crime reinforces this impunity. Afghan women are excluded not only by Taliban decree but also by global inaction.
Speaking as resistance
All women who spoke to the Kite Runners insisted on being named. For them, visibility is protection and resistance at once. Speaking publicly is dangerous—but silence, they say, would be worse.
The world negotiates with the Taliban. But it must listen to the women whose lives are being destroyed in the process.
The testimonies collected by the Kite Runners are not just stories of suffering. They are evidence of a political system that uses terror to govern—and a call to refuse its normalization.
