The New Oppression
The Taliban Never Stops Attacking Afghan Women
(Image by Joe van petten.)
Hello to everyone reading this. Helai Khurshid is back and calling for help for Afghan women to anyone out there. Approximately two weeks or more ago, I received a voice call from my mother. She was extremely sad and said that the Taliban has made new rules. I prefer to say new oppression, because the things they are doing are not rules. It is absolute injustice, cruelty and oppression.
The Taliban has said that women cannot go anywhere alone and cannot talk to any men. They simply want those brave women to be like slaves, stay in their cages, and never raise their voices. My mom added that she won’t let my sisters go to school anymore because the Taliban has beaten a girl in our city. She is afraid that an event like this may happen to my sister, who has been followed home by the Taliban on many occasions.My mom also won’t be able to go walking in the mornings.
For a while, I was shocked. I wanted to cry. What we have done that all of these miseries happen to us? Why? Because we are women?? Imagine living without going out, studying, doing any job, and even not talking. It sounds scary because it is.
My heart breaks for those women who lost their fathers or brothers during those fights with the Taliban. Thinking about how they will suffer makes me feel wholeheartedly sad. It’s not only education. Now, they don’t even give Afghan women the right to live. They consider women a tool or reproductive machine.
No, I will prove them wrong. I will reveal their real faces to the world. I will take revenge for all of the injustices they have done to us. Not only as a woman, but as a human we have the right to live, to be whatever we want, and to receive what we truly deserve. I am sure that the Taliban will continue their oppression, but I am more sure that they cannot last forever. I will fight until the end of my life, and I will bring the real freedom that Afghan women have wished for all of their lives.
I will succeed in this journey. Maybe not immediately, but definitely.
Helai Khurshid is a 16-year-old Afghan girl.
It is unfathomable! Who are these men? What kind of soul sickness lives in them that they oppress an entire gender as they do? They must be weak, frightened men underneath their bluster, violence and hatred. May they reap what they have sowed!
I long for the day when Afghan girls and women break free of the cages these ignorant men have imprisoned them in. Please don't lose hope for change to come. And it will eventually, through the patient determination and perseverance of girls and women like you.