Homeira Qaderi/ 8am.media
Since October 2021, I have been teaching creative writing at the “Golden Needle” Association. In each cycle, we have approximately forty core members registering from within Afghanistan, and about twenty guests who can join our Zoom sessions freely from anywhere in the world. I vividly remember the first round of classes. Our girls were brave, fearless, and determined, eager to learn the art of storytelling and committed to freedom of expression in every genre. I knew universities would be shut down, and that vital social spaces—where two different generations could come to understand life and discover peaceful solutions—would be taken away from young women. But what kept my hope alive were these online classes, which could ease some of the grief and help rescue society and life itself from becoming entirely one-dimensional.
Now, as we approach the fourth anniversary of Afghanistan’s fall, we are also witnessing the gradual emergence of another phenomenon: the collapse of family support systems. I recall one student who, throughout an entire course, never removed her mask. In a separate message, she confided that she was under the strict control of her brothers. Before the Taliban’s return, she had been a first-year student of Persian literature, leading a healthy and active social life.
Back in 1996, when the Taliban first plunged Afghanistan into darkness, they could only enforce their laws against women in public spaces. Over time, however, without a single Taliban stepping into people’s homes, their rules seeped inside—growing even harsher within the private sphere. During that period, brothers and fathers not only failed to question these misogynistic laws even once, but often aligned themselves with the Taliban’s mentality and practices. Forced marriages began within families. Beating girls at home sometimes just for talking to a female neighbor was no work of the Taliban; it was the work of brothers, fathers, and husbands who made the Taliban’s job easier long before a woman was whipped in the street.
Farzana, a girl I knew who set herself on fire during that time, was denied treatment by her brother, who shouted: “She chose to burn herself—why should we waste our money on her?” That sentence has haunted me for twenty-five years. Nafisa, my father’s cousin, was beaten so severely by her husband that she died in a Herat hospital. Her death was not at the hands of the Taliban. As for the young women who took their own lives by self-immolation, the judgments were merciless: “She lost this world and the next.” I heard those exact words during the mourning for my closest friend at the time, Lida.
It seems the cycle continues today. Accepting Taliban rule over Afghanistan is deeply harmful, difficult, and intolerable. Yet accepting the renewed restrictions of families and falling into the trap of Taliban-style thinking is equally difficult, intolerable, and even more painful. As Afghanistan’s current reality suggests, Taliban laws are often reinforced inside homes by the men of the family before they are ever imposed from outside by the Taliban themselves.
One of my colleagues at the Golden Needle once told me that her brother, a computer science student, considered watching social-issue films at home a sin. He warned the women in his family against watching movies, ironically, their only source of leisure. As it turns out, in the past four years, Afghan women have not only been forced to fight the Taliban, but also the multi-layered walls erected by men within their households after the Taliban’s return to power. Even unconventional clothing, speaking in online spaces, or maintaining small social connections are now subject to strict control by the men in their families.
For young women who, until recently, lived in an open society and nurtured dreams of independence and purpose, this brutal contradiction is both crushing and unimaginable. They now face men in their own homes whose behavior is completely alien to the men of the Republic era. The combination of the Taliban’s unjust laws and the excessive restrictions imposed by families has robbed many girls of even a modest, ordinary social life, pushing them toward deep psychological erosion. The grief that comes through their messages to me often feels unbearable—and, in some cases, unresolvable. The most dispiriting aspect is that their complaints are not about the Taliban, but about their own families.
This dual pressure from both the Taliban and their families has steadily eroded girls’ self-confidence. Day after day, they watch in disbelief as their human identity and individuality are stripped away. My lived experience tells me that once Taliban-style restrictions and pressures become routine in households, they persist long after the Taliban are gone, becoming part of how girls are raised. The heavy burdens of “honor,” “shame,” and “female virtue” are passed down not as human values, but as extensions of Taliban-era violence.
I clearly remember my aunts, who, after the Taliban shut down universities, resigned themselves to marriage. Even after the regime fell, they continued wearing the burqa. My younger sister, Zahra, who needed glasses and was in her second year of medical school, still wore a burqa to Herat Medical Faculty, and she was not the only one there who did.
The cycle of normalizing injustice traps generations, evolving into a form of gender apartheid within the family, enforced not by the Taliban, but by relatives themselves. We must remember: this cycle of domestic gender apartheid and the normalization of wrongdoing stunts the personal development of girls. Consequently, those who grow up under the Taliban’s suffocating environment will never be able to serve as the agents or architects of a progressive, healthy society.
The heavy costs of aligning, whether by consent, complacency, or complicity with the Taliban in the post-Taliban era, are immense:
Psychological cost: A generation mentally shattered will require years of therapy and social skills training.
Educational cost: Women who suffer academic disruption will need targeted financial and emotional support to re-enter education.
Economic cost: Excluding women from the workforce means a severe loss of both human and financial capital.
Time cost: Rebuilding the dignity, confidence, and identity of those subjected to humiliation and erasure will be painfully slow.
Cultural and social cost: The result of gender apartheid both within and outside the family is the upbringing of a generation that does not believe in women, does not accept them, and does not value them.
Does paying these costs and raising a generation that truly believes in equality, not resemble crossing the most treacherous of paths? We must ask ourselves: Is a society that has suffered such profound harm prepared to face the future? Can our impoverished Afghanistan afford such a heavy price?
Homeira Qaderi/ 8am.media
Since October 2021, I have been teaching creative writing at the “Golden Needle” Association. In each cycle, we have approximately forty core members registering from within Afghanistan, and about twenty guests who can join our Zoom sessions freely from anywhere in the world. I vividly remember the first round of classes. Our girls were brave, fearless, and determined, eager to learn the art of storytelling and committed to freedom of expression in every genre. I knew universities would be shut down, and that vital social spaces—where two different generations could come to understand life and discover peaceful solutions—would be taken away from young women. But what kept my hope alive were these online classes, which could ease some of the grief and help rescue society and life itself from becoming entirely one-dimensional.
Now, as we approach the fourth anniversary of Afghanistan’s fall, we are also witnessing the gradual emergence of another phenomenon: the collapse of family support systems. I recall one student who, throughout an entire course, never removed her mask. In a separate message, she confided that she was under the strict control of her brothers. Before the Taliban’s return, she had been a first-year student of Persian literature, leading a healthy and active social life.
Back in 1996, when the Taliban first plunged Afghanistan into darkness, they could only enforce their laws against women in public spaces. Over time, however, without a single Taliban stepping into people’s homes, their rules seeped inside—growing even harsher within the private sphere. During that period, brothers and fathers not only failed to question these misogynistic laws even once, but often aligned themselves with the Taliban’s mentality and practices. Forced marriages began within families. Beating girls at home sometimes just for talking to a female neighbor was no work of the Taliban; it was the work of brothers, fathers, and husbands who made the Taliban’s job easier long before a woman was whipped in the street.
Farzana, a girl I knew who set herself on fire during that time, was denied treatment by her brother, who shouted: “She chose to burn herself—why should we waste our money on her?” That sentence has haunted me for twenty-five years. Nafisa, my father’s cousin, was beaten so severely by her husband that she died in a Herat hospital. Her death was not at the hands of the Taliban. As for the young women who took their own lives by self-immolation, the judgments were merciless: “She lost this world and the next.” I heard those exact words during the mourning for my closest friend at the time, Lida.
It seems the cycle continues today. Accepting Taliban rule over Afghanistan is deeply harmful, difficult, and intolerable. Yet accepting the renewed restrictions of families and falling into the trap of Taliban-style thinking is equally difficult, intolerable, and even more painful. As Afghanistan’s current reality suggests, Taliban laws are often reinforced inside homes by the men of the family before they are ever imposed from outside by the Taliban themselves.
One of my colleagues at the Golden Needle once told me that her brother, a computer science student, considered watching social-issue films at home a sin. He warned the women in his family against watching movies, ironically, their only source of leisure. As it turns out, in the past four years, Afghan women have not only been forced to fight the Taliban, but also the multi-layered walls erected by men within their households after the Taliban’s return to power. Even unconventional clothing, speaking in online spaces, or maintaining small social connections are now subject to strict control by the men in their families.
For young women who, until recently, lived in an open society and nurtured dreams of independence and purpose, this brutal contradiction is both crushing and unimaginable. They now face men in their own homes whose behavior is completely alien to the men of the Republic era. The combination of the Taliban’s unjust laws and the excessive restrictions imposed by families has robbed many girls of even a modest, ordinary social life, pushing them toward deep psychological erosion. The grief that comes through their messages to me often feels unbearable—and, in some cases, unresolvable. The most dispiriting aspect is that their complaints are not about the Taliban, but about their own families.
This dual pressure from both the Taliban and their families has steadily eroded girls’ self-confidence. Day after day, they watch in disbelief as their human identity and individuality are stripped away. My lived experience tells me that once Taliban-style restrictions and pressures become routine in households, they persist long after the Taliban are gone, becoming part of how girls are raised. The heavy burdens of “honor,” “shame,” and “female virtue” are passed down not as human values, but as extensions of Taliban-era violence.
I clearly remember my aunts, who, after the Taliban shut down universities, resigned themselves to marriage. Even after the regime fell, they continued wearing the burqa. My younger sister, Zahra, who needed glasses and was in her second year of medical school, still wore a burqa to Herat Medical Faculty, and she was not the only one there who did.
The cycle of normalizing injustice traps generations, evolving into a form of gender apartheid within the family, enforced not by the Taliban, but by relatives themselves. We must remember: this cycle of domestic gender apartheid and the normalization of wrongdoing stunts the personal development of girls. Consequently, those who grow up under the Taliban’s suffocating environment will never be able to serve as the agents or architects of a progressive, healthy society.
The heavy costs of aligning, whether by consent, complacency, or complicity with the Taliban in the post-Taliban era, are immense:
Psychological cost: A generation mentally shattered will require years of therapy and social skills training.
Educational cost: Women who suffer academic disruption will need targeted financial and emotional support to re-enter education.
Economic cost: Excluding women from the workforce means a severe loss of both human and financial capital.
Time cost: Rebuilding the dignity, confidence, and identity of those subjected to humiliation and erasure will be painfully slow.
Cultural and social cost: The result of gender apartheid both within and outside the family is the upbringing of a generation that does not believe in women, does not accept them, and does not value them.
Does paying these costs and raising a generation that truly believes in equality, not resemble crossing the most treacherous of paths? We must ask ourselves: Is a society that has suffered such profound harm prepared to face the future? Can our impoverished Afghanistan afford such a heavy price?
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