2025/'24: Jan wk4 -- Jan wk2 -- Dec wk4 P2 -- Dec wk4 -- Dec wk3 --

 When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali.

ZAN times - January 21, 2025 - By: Zan Times
<<Fleeing oppression, facing statelessness: Afghan women in Pakistan
Rokhsar, a 28-year-old woman, was having breakfast with her husband at around 9 a.m. on January 8 when four police officers, one of them a woman, forcibly entered their home. Speaking with Zan Times, Rokhsar recounts that she and her husband were in a state of panic and tried to dress properly. However, the police rushed them into a vehicle without giving them a chance to prepare. “They didn’t allow me to put on a warm shawl or grab any essential items. We were still in our home clothes, and our documents were left behind as they forcibly dragged us away,” she tells Zan Times. The young woman and her husband were taken to Haji Camp, where most Afghan refugees are held for several days before being deported to Afghanistan. The police kept Rokhsar in the women’s section and her husband in the men’s section. Distressed by the separation, Rokhsar tried to resist. “While they were taking us to the camp, I screamed and fainted,” she recounts. “They beat me so badly, but I was unconscious and didn’t realize it. Later, I noticed that my right hand was injured. My husband told me that the Pakistani police had hit my hand.” Rokhsar and her husband remained in police custody for four days and were not allowed to see each other during this time. “For four days, we had only a thin mat to sleep on and a single blanket to cover ourselves. I had an allergic reaction to the food there, and when I was released from the camp, my whole body was covered in rashes, and I felt nauseous,” she explains. On January 12, Rokhsar and her husband, along with 44 others, were transported to the Torkham border by Pakistani police. “We were loaded into four pickup trucks. At 9 a.m., we left the camp, and by 2 p.m., we were handed over to the Taliban on Afghan soil,” she says. Rokhsar says that the Taliban biometrically registered everyone at the Torkham border and entered their information into a database. “They told us that we are banned from entering Pakistan for an indefinite period of time,” she explains. Rokhsar and her husband were stranded at the side of the road in freezing winter, with no money and nowhere to go. They borrowed a mobile phone from a fellow Afghan and spent two hours trying to contact family members. Eventually, they managed to arrange a car to take them to Kabul. Rokhsar and her husband had illegally entered Pakistan in May 2024 and spent the last eight months living and working in Islamabad. They fled Kabul after the Taliban intelligence agency issued an arrest warrant for Rokhsar and her husband, accusing them of running a women’s gym. Rokhsar says she secretly trained numerous women in her home after sports facilities were closed to women by the Taliban. A relative warned them about the impending arrest, which gave them enough time to flee their country. In Pakistan, they managed to acquire a token from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Pakistan, which marks the first stage of formal refugee recognition. “My husband was a Muay Thai coach, and I was a fitness trainer. In a Pakistani gym, we trained Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, which allowed us to make a living. But now, back in Afghanistan, we have no idea what we’ll do,” Rokhsar says. According to a report issued from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan at the end of November, there were 1,347,048 Afghan refugees registered in Pakistan. Of these, 19.7 percent are women aged 18 to 59, 6.4 percent are girls aged 12 to 17, and 1.6 percent are women over 60. However, these figures only represent those refugees officially registered in the country. A significant but unknown number of Afghan refugees continue to illegally enter Pakistan for work and survival, primarily settling in cities like Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar, and areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Since the Taliban takeover, Afghan women fleeing persecution have faced harassment by Pakistani police. Between January 1 and 16 this year, Pakistani police conducted door-to-door searches in Islamabad, detaining and deporting large numbers of Afghan women and children. Sabzagul, a 34 -year-old Afghan woman, was arrested on January 6 along with her two daughters who are 18 and 2. The family had been living in the Bhara Kahu area of Islamabad. Sabzagul recounts her ordeal: “The day we heard that Pakistani police were searching houses for refugees, we locked our home around noon and left. However, three male officers and one female officer stopped me and my daughters in the street and demanded documents, which we didn’t have. They arrested us on the spot.” Sabzagul, a former civil activist during the Republic era, illegally entered Pakistan with her two daughters on August 28, 2021, two weeks after Kabul fell to the Taliban. Her husband, a soldier in the Afghan National Army under the previous government, was imprisoned by the Taliban for eight months. In March 2022, he managed to join his family in Pakistan also illegally crossing the border. Though no one in Sabzagul’s family have passports or visas, they all obtained IOM cards. However, Pakistani police do not recognize those cards as valid residency documents. “Obtaining a passport from the Taliban is very difficult,” Sabzagul tells Zan Times. “When my husband was released from prison, he was too afraid of being arrested again to apply for a passport. We also feared for our lives and didn’t return to Afghanistan, staying here without documents.” After their arrest, Sabzagul and her daughters were transported in a minivan to Haji Camp. Sabzagul recounts seeing numerous women and girls in the camp who had also been arrested for not having valid visas. They were luckier than most – after an hour in the camp, the police sent them home because Sabzagul’s younger daughter cannot survive without medication for a respiratory illness. Others wait and worry for a knock on the door from the police. Mehria and her husband were government employees before the Taliban takeover. They lost their jobs. For three years, they worked as undercover journalists, using pseudonyms for their work. In April 2024, Taliban intelligence raided their home and arrested Mehria’s husband. Although her husband was released that day for lack of evidence, the couple feared for their safety. They never returned to their home and lived in hiding for seven months. Finally exhausted by this life, they secured Pakistani visas and moved to Islamabad in October 2024, hoping for peace and a pathway to resettle in Canada. On January 1, 2025, Pakistani police knocked on their door. Despite showing his passport and visa extension documents, Mehria’s husband was told his visa had expired and he would be detained ahead of deportation back to Afghanistan. The police did not arrest Mehria, citing her status as a mother of a nursing child. “I thought moving to Pakistan would free us from such problems, but now the Pakistani police are our new challenge,” Mehria says. With the help of Afghan neighbours, Mehria managed to secure her husband’s release after paying 20,000 Pakistani rupees. As a condition, he had to sign a commitment to renew his visa within a week. Both Mehria and her husband are now anxiously waiting for their visa extensions. On January 17, police again knocked on their door. “This time, it was just one male police officer, but he was accompanied by the block’s security guard. He asked my husband for his visa. My husband showed it to him. Then he asked, ‘Have your family members also obtained visas?’ My husband replied, ‘Yes, we all have our visas,’” she tells Zan Times. That day, the police officer left without arresting anyone, but the anxiety of statelessness weighs heavily on Mehria: “I was so scared that my hands and feet went numb. I began packing the house, even gathering our clothes, so I’d be ready to leave if they told us to.” Like Mehria, many Afghan women — journalists, human rights activists, civil society activists, and former government employees — have sought refuge in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, these women lost their rights to work, education, and even basic freedoms like visiting parks or sports facilities. Though they fled to neighbouring countries in search of safety, they now endure the hardships of statelessness, unemployment, an uncertain future, and the constant threat of deportation, leaving them in a state of perpetual unrest.>>
Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/01/21/fleeing-oppression-facing-statelessness-afghan-women-in-pakistan/


Afghan girls trapped in forced marriages
ZAN times - January 20, 2025 - By: Arzo Arwin and Maryam Rahimi
<<More than one-third of Afghan girls trapped in forced marriages
She tries to hide her tears, but they flow down her cheeks. Sometimes, she gazes out the window; other times, she lowers her head and fixes her eyes on the carpet. It feels like she wants to scream, to shout out her sorrows, but is afraid. She notices the slightly open door of the room and speaks softly so her voice won’t carry beyond the doorway. She doesn’t want any members of her husband’s large family to hear her words. Khatema was only 10 years old when she was engaged to a 65-year-old man. Through tears and protests, she persuaded her family to delay the wedding by five years. Later, her family came to regret their decision and wanted to break off the engagement. Then Khatema’s father lost his job at a local NGO after the Taliban took power. Unemployed and desperate, he agreed for the marriage to continue in exchange for a hefty bride price. Around one third of Afghan girls are being forced into marriage since the Taliban returned to power, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In an October 2023 report, SIGAR noted that 35 percent of Afghan girls under the age of 18 were forced into marriage since 2021; for those under 15, 17 percent were forced into marriage. According to Voice of America, which cited SIGAR, 361 of the 578 cases of forced marriages documented between December 2022 and February 2023 involved underage girls. Khatema was one of those underage brides. In April 2022, her family held her wedding in Nangarhar province and forced her to move into the home of her husband. He paid 500,000 afghani (approximately US$5,700) as a bride price. “I would cry and beg them not to marry me off to this old man, but my father said, ‘Even if you die, this man will still be your husband, and I will never let you separate from him,’” she tells Zan Times. Khatema had dreams of studying and becoming a journalist, but her family’s desperation, belief in patriarchal traditions, and the Taliban’s oppressive laws crushed her hopes. “Whenever I saw journalists on TV, I wished I could be like them. Maybe if schools hadn’t been closed, with the help of my teachers and the school administration, I could have escaped this marriage and pursued my dreams,” she says. During the long years of her engagement, Khatema clung to hope that her life would improve: “I hoped I could study and free myself from this man. I even planned to change my name from Khatema to Arzo after breaking off the engagement. My name, Khatema, was given to me to signify the end of daughters in our family, but four more daughters were born after me. ”Now living with her husband and his children, Khatema endures constant humiliation and physical abuse. Her husband, who also has two other wives, 11 children, and 13 grandchildren, routinely mistreats her. Struggling to maintain her composure during the interview, she swallows her sobs, drinks some water, and says, “I don’t want them to find out. If they do, they’ll tell my husband that I cried or complained to someone. My husband will beat me with a wire and say, ‘Don’t go crying to anyone.’” Khatema’s suffering is not unique. Zan Times interviewed more than 17 girls aged 10 to 17 who say that their poverty-stricken families forced them into marriages with older men in exchange for large sums of money. These girls, who are from across Afghanistan, including the provinces of Laghman, Nangarhar, Khost, Kandahar, Kabul, Balkh, Bamyan, and Kunduz, unanimously expressed their dissatisfaction with these marriages. At least five of them report that they have been subjected to physical and emotional abuse by their husbands.
Anargul, a 16-year-old from Laghman province, once dreamed of becoming a doctor and helping the women in her village in Shah Wali Kot district. Before the Taliban’s rule, she studied up to 11th grade and often shared her aspirations with her teachers and friends. Her conservative family and strict father crushed her dreams. “When the schools closed, I wanted to join a sewing class, but my father didn’t allow it and said, ‘You’ll stay home because you’re getting married soon,’” she recalls to Zan Times. In early 2022, Anargul was forced to marry a 74-year-old man. Her father beat her when she resisted the marriage. “I told my father I didn’t want to marry that old man. He beat me until he was out of strength. When I pleaded with my mother, she also said, ‘Accept it; don’t bring shame on us,’” says Anargul. Her husband is a harsh and abusive man who berates and beats her on any pretext. “He’s old and hits me over everything,” she says. “He’d say, ‘The food isn’t tasty,’ and then beat me. During my pregnancy, he hit me multiple times. My son was born with disabilities, and the doctors said the baby was harmed while in my womb.” Now a mother of two, Anargul sought help to escape her marriage four months ago. “I asked neighboring girls where to go and what to do to get a divorce,” she says. “Someone told my husband, and he punched me and said, ‘I’ll kill you, but I’ll never divorce you.’” The combination of illiteracy, cultural ignorance, poverty, patriarchy, and the Taliban’s misogynistic rule has turned both society and families into prisons and torture chambers for countless Afghan women and girls. Two months ago, Marwa, a 14-year-old from Nangarhar province, was forcibly engaged to a 60-year-old man who lives in the United States. Her family accepted 900,000 afghani (approximately US$10,500) in exchange for the engagement. Like her peers, Marwa neither accepts this union nor sees a way out: “When I told my father that if he didn’t stop the marriage, I would kill myself, he grabbed my hair, slammed my head against the wall, and beat me until he got tired. He said, ‘Don’t bring shame upon us, or I’ll kill you myself.’” Last week, Marwa, bruised and in pain, begged one of her father’s uncles to stop the marriage. He refused, saying, “This is your father’s decision, and we must accept it. We don’t want to damage our relationship with your father.” In January 2024, The Washington Post published a report titled “In the new Afghanistan, sell your daughter or starve.” The report detailed the lives of 118 young girls in Herat province who had been sold into marriage in exchange for money. The average price for each girl was at least US$2,000 — an amount equivalent to a year’s living expenses for a poor family in Herat. Khatema and the girls interviewed by Zan Times know they are trapped. Their desperation is both obvious and increasing. As Khatema tells Zan Times: “If I don’t find a way out of this forced marriage, I might one day kill myself.”
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writers. Arzo Arwin and Maryam Rahimi are the pseudonyms of journalists in Afghanistan.
Sohaila Sabri, Zarmina Mohammadi, and Humaira Jafari (all names are pseudonyms) also contributed reporting to this article.>>
Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/01/20/more-than-one-third-of-afghan-girls-trapped-in-forced-marriages/


From educator to embroiderer
ZAN times - January 15, 2025 - By: Niloofar Shaheemi
<<From educator to embroiderer: A teacher’s struggle for survival under the Taliban
This narrative was told to Shaheemi:
To make ends meet, I do bead and leather embroidery. This work doesn’t pay much, but it helps us get by. Over the past year, I’ve had many difficulties and am now dealing with severe financial challenges in supporting our family of eight. One of my neighbours, aware of the situation, suggested I learn bead embroidery. I was delighted and started working with her for a company that provides us with beads and tools. Usually, they give us work that takes 10 to 12 days to complete. We earn 200 afghani for each metre of bead embroidery. I work four to five hours daily and sometimes embroider with my daughters. I earn about 800 to 1,000 afghani a month, depending on the amount of work completed. My eldest daughter is 21 years old and married. My youngest daughter is in the first grade and is 7. My second daughter, who is 18, was in the 12th grade when the Taliban came back to power. She developed psychological issues since the schools were closed. I spent everything I had on her treatment. She would cry for hours, then grow weak and faint. She is somewhat better now but still talks to herself and refuses to go out. Despite her illness, she participated in the capacity-building exam that the Taliban held for 12th grade girls and managed to obtain her diploma. My eldest son is 15 years old and in the 8th grade. He studies well but will have to give up his education if he starts working soon. My second son is 13 years old and in the 6th grade, and my youngest son is 8 years old and in the 2nd grade. Now that winter has arrived, I’m in debt on one hand, and on the other, fuel prices are extremely high. I can’t afford to buy firewood. Our house, being shaded and without sunlight, is colder than homes that receive sunlight. In addition to the embroidering income, I’ve rented two of the four rooms in my house for 5,000 afghani a month. The income covers only a small portion of the needs for our family. In the past year, I’ve borrowed money from friends and purchased food and firewood on credit from shopkeepers. Our situation is dire and I don’t know what to do. If things continue this way, I may have to send my boys to work as apprentices with a mechanic, tailor, or shopkeeper. I know from experience that we shouldn’t force children into hard labour at such early ages, which is why we are enduring these hardships and poverty. When I was a teacher, I earned 8,000 afghani a month. That salary, combined with the rent from those two rooms, covered our needs. But I was made redundant a year after the Taliban took over. The school principal handed us our dismissal letters and released us from our duties. No matter how hard I tried to regain my job, I couldn’t. They completely ignore my eight years of teaching experience.
My husband died six years ago, which means that all family responsibilities are on my shoulders. Thankfully, we have a roof over our heads and don’t need to pay rent. Otherwise, we would have faced even more crushing hardships during this time. I owe about 40,000 afghani to neighbours and friends, and around 8,000 afghani to shopkeepers. All these amounts are recorded in my notebook as well as theirs. The shopkeepers haven’t pressured me too much yet, but lately they ask me to pay back at least part of what I owe. I used the money to buy food. With winter, I’m burdened by debt on one side, the incredibly high cost of fuel on the other. Among my relatives and close friends, there’s no one who can afford to help us. My parents are elderly, and my brother struggles to cover the expenses of his own family. The reality is that life in Afghanistan today isn’t good enough for anyone to have the capacity to help others.
Niloofar Shaheemi is a pseudonym for a female journalist in Afghanistan.>>
Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/01/15/from-educator-to-embroiderer-a-teachers-struggle-for-survival-under-the-taliban/

Women's Liberation Front 2019/cryfreedom.net 2025