The future we wanted for Afghan women

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hi nilofer thank you for being with us

today hello thank you for having me and

a very warm good afternoon to everyone

you love

you are a woman

activist for women rights and a mother

of three

and

back in afghanistan

you were

a business owner and

you had a very active life and on august

20th your life changed completely

uh can you tell us

how did it happen and uh why how did it

happen that you had to leave

all right so

imagine all the titles you just

mentioned about me the life

each one of those titles took me years

to of work for that

and

suddenly an entire country of 40 million

people population collapses

and you’re one of those

40 million people

and

all you have to do is

you receive a message

it’s two and

it’s

almost late in the in the night

just like other nights your kids ask for

favorite noodles and for that they

always turn to their daddy because mommy

doesn’t know how to cook

and me as usual having my

cup of green tea

that night my mother was also with me

because of the situation and she knew

that i was stressed

i receive a message

the message says that

you have to be at the airport in two

hours

and you only have two backpacks

allowance

wow two backpacks so how did you feel

when you get this message

you know my heart dropped i just had a

look

at my mother’s face and

she also broke a little and i said i had

to go

and i didn’t have the time to

have a even

look at my house and i just threw

everything on the floor and pick the

most important things in one bag pack in

my kids

diaper and milk another and we had to

leave

with

we left

the food for my daughter left on the

stove

my cup of tea

right on the side of my bed

and

an entire home

so you know how i felt

yes wow

so uh when you arrived at the airport uh

with your family with your three

children with your husband

what happened and what did you

experience at the airport

you may have seen this apocalypse movies

a lot in hollywood

which i would always say that it’s

impossible for human beings to be this

cruel to run over each other to reach

one plane

to save their life and families

but we experienced the same thing in

reality

it was the doomsday of our life

hundred thousands of people

each one of them desperate to save their

families their kids and

to live leave everything behind

and we were also one of them

there was a lot of obstacles we had to

cross

the terrorist checkpoints who just had

invaded our country we had to

pass these checkpoints without getting

recognized and we had to go through

a hundred thousand of crowd

and there was a moment

that four women got run over and died

that’s what what we witnessed and

another moment

when the taliban recognized my husband

who’s also a very

famous anti-terrorist figure and also he

is from a minority community shia

community

they pulled him out of the crowd put the

gun on his head started saying that kill

this

kafir non-believer because for

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can you tell him

yes my my my daughter was screaming and

my son that don’t kill our father don’t

kill our own father and i run to them

started speaking in their language which

is my language too pashto and i said

all right we are leaving our home our

life our country just let us live take

everything let us go

and they turned to me

and they hit me with the back of the gun

and said that

your father was covered why because they

married a pashtun daughter to a hazara

son-in-law

and i know that your father is

raised raised you in a little bit

different way so can you tell us a

little bit more about this

well

when he repeated the word

coward

in my head i said you know

you don’t know anything about my father

my father came come from a very wealthy

landlord background but he left

everything and and decided to be a

teacher his entire life

and

he chose to teach people to teach the

generation to educate them and no matter

what

regime came what political stance there

was

he was neutral

and he taught us to be neutral

i remember one day i was playing outside

because i have experienced the first era

of taliban i was born under taliban i

was four or five years old i was playing

outside without a scarf

a talib commander

recognizes me and says come here and

when i go he slaps me very hard that

why are you not wearing a scarf if next

time i see you without a scarf i will

show you

what it is and i run crying to my father

he was so angry and furious that he told

my mother

chop her hair off from now on she will

be

dressing as a boy so she could

experience every every little bit of

life as her brother do

and that’s when my life changed and i

could experience everything

even under taliban

wow so you were

dressing

as a boy and you were exposed to the

life that boys could experience right

right

i was dressed up as a boy up until 13

years

when when my body started changing

and then i was forced to

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change to a girl and before that i

remember

i had my first period since i was

dressing as a boy i was doing all the

activities that a boy should do i was

also taking karate classes

and back then the mothers would tell the

daughters don’t do any activities that

boy do like cycling like

playing sports that boys play because

you will lose virginity

and that day after a hard day of

practice i come home and at the night i

see blood

and i was shocked that my mother will

kill me

maybe i i broke my virginity

and it was horrible moment

but luckily i had a partner in crime who

was the same like me who she was a girl

she was dressing as a boy and i told her

that i i broke my virginity and

she was laughing at me and said no this

is not that case

you are getting your first period and

she taught me how to use a piece of

cloth

because back then we didn’t had the

sanitary pad afghanistan was way

backward then

now

so

that’s where my activism started

the first

was when my father dressed me as a boy

and i got to experience both lives and i

knew that what a man man thinks in what

of being a woman is

so i started from school going to each

one of my classmates asking how old are

you and when they say 13 do you know you

will get periods

and i remember getting in trouble so

many times my teachers would

would fight with me and call my mother

and my father that

you haven’t teach taught your daughter

manners and my father would say oh i

have taught her everything she needs to

know

my father was always there to have my

back and then when i grow up i started

this group of

dhukhtarani shamal means

girls of the north and i gathered

girls like me girls likewise and also

girl rebellious girls from school we

formed a group and we started educating

each and every woman about the things

that mothers were ashamed to talk with

with the daughters

and that’s how my activism started and

then

wow this is so interesting that you

started being an activist already at

such a young young age

and

how did it influence when you grew up

this uh

dressing up as a boy and starting

educating young girls at school

well

today i’m here in this platform it means

that it started quite good and went very

well but the only thing which went wrong

was

the collapse of my country we were going

quite good the women of afghanistan

was this close to reach

that 10 percent of fright which european

women has they are not asking for much

just the 10 percent they want to be able

to walk on the street without

being killed they want to sit in a

restaurant have a cup of coffee they

want to work they want to drive which is

quite common thing it’s not a crime to

be able to drive

and the

most important thing for afghan women is

and was

to have the right on their children to

have their name in the in their

children’s birth certificate which was

forbidden in afghanistan

and we made it after two years of

activism we just had got this law passed

that the mothers would be mentioned

in the children’s id and

now it’s all gone

and uh tell us a little bit about the

women political participation network um

you started this group two years ago and

uh

who who is the member

tell us a little bit about the members

of this group and about your activities

well this group is all

formed with independent women and also

some of our minority community the lgbt

community

and the women who are in this group we

formed the reason we formed this group

because two years ago um these peace

talks with the terrorist group who has

invaded our country right now started

and we as afghan women were

never

ready to go back and we were afraid that

this this will happen so we started

forming this group coming together

uh through social media it started and

we started advocating that if you want

to have a peace talk you should have

women included

if there are no women there is no peace

talk and we will and that’s how it

formed in past six months when the

situation started changing

we started uh being more active

and um

as you could uh

see on the on the news the protests

which have been taking place by the past

three months it was all it started with

this group of women

i would to give some example of the

women who are

in this group these are just smear

examples there are a lot of them

we have

dr batul said heideri who is from a very

religious family

she covers herself from head to toe but

she is a sexologist

she has a phd in sex therapy she is a

sex therapist and her her

thesis of phd is on bachchabazi

we have in afghanistan this topic

you call it maybe

the molesting yeah molesting young boys

and and that’s a very

common thing between them

warlord

but also a very dangerous topic to work

on especially for a religious woman

then we have engineer zahra jaffari

again she is she’s from a very

conservative city herrod city but she

has made her own way

she lived

alone single in kabul and she has been

active and you can see her face all over

the protest in all over the media

we have khaleda popozay afghan

football team captain

she was the

the woman the first woman who talked

about

the harassment and and molestation she

had she faced when she was in

afghanistan in olympics by the olympic

head and she started

here metoo movement in afghanistan

and she is the one who evacuated the

entire

football girls football team to

london with some of our lgbt community

members

and there is one person from our lgbt

community

whose name is afshar in afghanistan he

had to be a boy because he

they see them as a boy but he choose

to be

a girl and she has chosen fatana as her

name

and now she is in london safe so these

are just few examples but

we have in this group we have teachers

we have tailors we have housewife we

have mother

and and all they have in common is they

want the basic right for a woman they

want women to be counted as a human

instead of an object because in

afghanistan

before these 20 years women were just an

object a

child-making machine

a maid in the home and that’s

basically a nanny

but past 20 years changed their

narrative they tasted freedom they

tasted

what is it what does it feel like to be

a human so that’s all they’re asking and

i don’t think it’s much yeah so

what now lilofar what what is the future

of afghan women

if

this this collapse hadn’t happened you

would see afghan women on the best

platforms but unfortunately

one way or another these this this group

will be

recognized by the world

but we don’t want that

right now all we can do is the women who

have been who are created all around the

world i am just one small example

there are hundreds and thousands like me

who have been evacuating to the

different countries

all we can do is

to use their talent to give them

platform to nurture them so they could

fight back for their countries just the

way i’m using this platform to speak for

my sisters

and i think

the future of women holds

we we are the flag bearers we who have

left the country

we shouldn’t stop and we will not stop

yeah so you know far what what can we do

to

support afghan women in in any way

possible

you can do many things

you you know luckily you live in a

country where you have rights

there is no upper class and lower class

everybody has equal rights so you can

use your rights to save people

i was saved by two common people a woman

named liam marshall from spain and a man

named mihai jakovsky a journalist a

radio journalist from poland

if they can save me and my five kids and

today i’m alive i’m here i was able to

organize this much of protest you can

too

you don’t need to spend money all you

you need to do is

write an email ask your government

ask the world

to not recognize these terrorists to

help afghan women afghan people

or you can you can you can

maybe if you

are generous enough you can

find an afghan woman who is the

the head of the family in afghanistan

you can support her

i don’t know maybe financially even 50s

lotte means a lot for a person in

afghanistan

or

the best thing keep speaking about them

keep them alive

don’t let afghanistan topic to be

shoved under the rag we don’t want to be

forgotten

right now when i’m speaking here

hundreds of afghan women watching me

online and all they have asked me to do

is to ask you all to remember them to

talk about them to use your social media

platforms to use your gatherings to at

least say that this is happening in

afghanistan this is happening to afghan

women they are human

afghanistan is a 40 million population

country and 20 million is women you

cannot eliminate these 20 million women

you cannot forget these 20 million

humans who exist there

so this will be the best thing you can

do

yeah

thank you nilofer for this message

so

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you