The hope of a bright future dashed for Afghan women<

A young Afghan mother is distressed by the idea that women in her country are losing hope of a future for themselves and their daughters with the reconquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban.

• Read also: For Afghan women, the return of the Taliban marks “the end of the world”

"I wanted to change the country so that my nine-month-old daughter would have a better future than me, and today, with the situation, I don't know if I will be able to do anything for her. I want to see my daughter grow up, I want to see her educate herself and above all that she can have opportunities in life,” confides, with a trembling voice, a 28-year-old Afghan woman who lives in Herat, a city in the west of the country.

Fearing for her life and safety, the woman who lives more than 800 km from Kabul, the country's capital, asked to remain anonymous so as not to be found by the Taliban, who established a regime of terror between 1996 and 2001.

During a call made via an encrypted telecommunications application, the young mother remembers the arrival of Americans and allied forces in her country. She was then 8 years old.

“Before, my father taught my brothers and me at home because we didn’t have access to school. When the Americans came, we were able to go to school. Then we went to secondary school, then to university in Kabul, ”explains the one who graduated in law and political science.

The odds of getting away with it were close at hand.

More hope

But by retaking the country after 20 years of war, the Taliban have destroyed all hope for the future for young people and especially for women, she says, sobbing.

“Our future, our plans are gone. Our dreams are gone, our careers too.

“It’s so sad to see that now we no longer have our place in society. I feel so weak, I can't do anything to change that, I don't have the power to do it. I have no choice, I have no voice”, she drops.

and then there I was , silently learning how to pronounce the Arabic letters. I new it'd be difficult, I hadn't imagined how much...

— Pedro Oliveira Wed Apr 22 21:10:21 +0000 2015

Soon, she could lose her rights and her equality with her husband, with the return of Sharia, the Islamic law that the Taliban advocates.

So the only way out would be to find refuge in another country, she thinks. With her husband, they also made their request to try to obtain a visa to flee to Canada with their young child.

This promised land allows her to dream of continuing to fight for equality, to encourage women to get involved in the development of their community and to talk about their problem, as she had been doing for four years.

“I hope we can come,” she said in shy English.

Already changes

In the current context, the young mother has had to stop working, because it is becoming too dangerous for her.

"It's better that women don't work, so as not to have any problems," she breathes.

Men who work in offices have also swapped their suits and ties for more traditional outfits. Some women have started putting on the full veil, the burqa. Frightened to go out, they also go out much less since the arrival of the Taliban, says the 28-year-old woman.

This twenty-year look back also makes him fear that in a few months Afghanistan will again fall into oblivion, while today the eyes of the world are riveted on his country.

“In the 90s, before the attacks of September 11, nobody knew what was going on here. It was when the twin towers collapsed that we saw what was happening there. I hope that, in a few months, we will still try to help us, ”she said with a tight throat.

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