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A 12 months in the past right now, journalist Fatema Hosseini was crouched close to a Taliban checkpoint on the Kabul airport, lined head to toe in a burqa, sweaty, dizzy and scared.
The Taliban had taken over Afghanistan’s capital metropolis 4 days earlier and lots more and plenty of Afghans swarmed the airport, determined for flights out. The Taliban guarding the gates mentioned they’d shoot anybody who stood. So Hosseini was duckwalking, attempting to remain low however attempting to push ahead.
A tear gasoline canister landed in entrance of her. Tears stuffed her eyes; her head felt heavy. She was trapped in the course of a big household. When individuals began working and pushing from the gasoline, she stood, too, and a person reached round and grabbed her between her legs. She froze. Bullets zipped over her head. A lady smacked her on the again and mentioned: “Sit down! They’re going to shoot you!”
As a substitute she stood taller and shouted, “I wish to get out!”
She would get out. First to Kyiv, Ukraine, after which to america.
Immediately, she’s a school pupil and an rising U.S. journalist. She and her household are safely out of attain of the Taliban. However she just isn’t at relaxation.
“I nonetheless have nightmares of seeing myself in Afghanistan,” she instructed me. “I nonetheless have goals of being chased by the Taliban.”
Hosseini is out, however she’s not free.
Hosseini had labored for a number one Afghan information company through the lengthy American presence in Afghanistan. She understood what would occur to ladies like her below Taliban rule.
In Kabul, at age 27, Hosseini was an educated journalist who spoke out towards corruption and remedy of ladies. She was additionally a freelancer for USA TODAY.
After America’s chaotic departure final 12 months, the Taliban returned to energy, and she turned a goal.
“I by no means imagined myself getting evacuated in a really scary approach,” she says throughout a assembly final week in USA TODAY’s Washington, D.C., bureau. “On the airport … being lashed by the Taliban, being sexually harassed.”
The week of Hosseini’s escape, not less than 20 individuals died on the airport.
Because the chaos in Kabul was unfolding, we labored with companions to assist Hosseini and 17 others ultimately escape.
She’s certain if she was nonetheless there she can be in jail, chased and tortured or compelled into marriage.
“Possibly these nightmares come from every day information that I learn or contacting my mates again in Afghanistan and my kinfolk,” she says. “Normally I dream of being in Afghanistan.”
In Might, the Taliban ordered that girls in public be lined from head to toe, solely their eyes uncovered. Ladies aren’t allowed to work besides in essential jobs that can not be accomplished by males. Ladies can not attend secondary faculty. Younger ladies are compelled to marry Taliban troopers.
“Daughters, like as younger as possibly 10 or 11, they can’t stroll out on the road in lots of provinces,” Hosseini says. “Many nonetheless don’t wish to cowl their faces. In order that they exit with out having that burqa on. The Taliban observe them. And in the event that they like them, they chase them they usually discover out the place they stay they usually power their mother and father to get their daughters married to the Taliban.
“They’re afraid of ladies’s empowerment,” she says. “They’re afraid that girls get to the place of being unbiased and say no to males.”
And the ladies are determined.
As violence towards women and girls rises, the facilities and assist that used to assist them have been shut down by the Taliban. Some individuals flip to self-immolation, setting themselves on hearth, a closing act of escape.
“There’s a lot psychological pressures,” Hosseini says. “What is going on to occur the subsequent day? Is there a future? Does hope exist for Afghan ladies?
“Once I speak about these very primary rights of the way to gown, to get an training, to get entry to well being care, these are actually primary human rights, proper?”
And when ladies do communicate up, and even simply stroll outdoors with no man, they will find yourself in jail. Once they get out, Hosseini mentioned, their households typically disavow them, ashamed that they broke the foundations. They develop into outcasts from their very own households and communities.
“They actually don’t have any place to go,” she says. And, “God is aware of what occurred to them within the jail.”
Amnesty Worldwide investigated the remedy of ladies in Afghanistan from September 2021 to June 2022, interviewing 90 Afghan ladies and 11 ladies between the ages of 14 and 74. Its report was launched final month.
One protester imprisoned for a number of days in 2022 instructed researchers, “[The Taliban guards] stored coming to my room and displaying me footage of my household. They stored repeating … ‘We are able to kill them, all of them, and also you received’t have the ability to do something. … Don’t cry, don’t make a scene. After protesting, it’s best to have anticipated days like this.’”
The protester was additionally overwhelmed: “They locked the door. They began screaming at me. … [One Taliban member] mentioned, ‘You nasty lady. … America just isn’t giving us the cash due to you bitches.’ … Then he kicked me. It was so sturdy that my again was injured, and he kicked my chin too. … I nonetheless really feel the ache in my mouth. It hurts at any time when I wish to speak.”
After ladies started posting footage of their accidents on social media, the Taliban started beating them between their breasts and between their legs so they would not share pictures, the Amnesty report mentioned.
Afghanistan’s financial system has collapsed and greater than 90% of the nation does not have sufficient meals. Amongst households headed by females, 98% go hungry.
“So there are households who don’t have any different methods of surviving, aside from marrying their daughters off,” Hosseini says. “They get a really small amount of cash, sadly.”
Additionally, if a person loses his job and may’t afford meals, “then he will get a lot strain and he can do nothing else aside from punishing his spouse, punishing his daughter,” she says.
Hosseini is now in graduate faculty on the Philip Merrill School of Journalism on the College of Maryland, School Park.
She misses her room again in Kabul and laughing at cafes with mates. She misses her mother and father, 18-year-old brother and 2-year-old sister, who evacuated to Canada.
However she’s obtained a objective: Raise up the voices of ladies in Afghanistan, inform the tales of those that’ve escaped. She desires to know what went flawed over the past 20 years in her nation. After which, “I am gonna discover out that what I am gonna do with the Taliban.”
When Hosseini fled Kabul, she reached the U.S. at a exceptional second. Her airplane touched down at Dulles Worldwide Airport in Virginia on the morning of Sept. 11, 2021. It had been 20 years – virtually to the minute – since al-Qaida terrorists based mostly in Afghanistan had launched their assault. Within the time since then, the Taliban had fallen, and risen once more.
“(The trauma) is going to stick with me for the remainder of my life,” she says. “I can not do something about it. There are mates of mine who ask me to go and go to the therapist. Possibly they may assist with my sleeping. Possibly they may assist me to maneuver on. They assume that, OK, now my household is out protected. They assume that I’m protected in order that I can begin a brand new life, begin from scratch. And transfer on. However so far it has not helped me.
“And I believe it will not assist me till I attain the purpose that I can do one thing towards the Taliban. I can increase the voices of ladies on the market.”
So right now, one 12 months since bullets whizzed over her head, she’s doing simply that – talking out towards the Taliban, sharing the tales of Afghan ladies, reminding the world of the struggling of her individuals.
Here is hoping that with each story she tells, with each voice she lifts, the nightmare recedes – and her goals develop.
To assist Hosseini along with her school prices, you’ll be able to donate right here.
Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY and president of the Gannett information division. The Backstory provides insights into our greatest tales of the week. If you would like to get The Backstory in your inbox each week, join right here. Attain Carroll at EIC@usatoday.com or observe her on Twitter: @nicole_carroll. Thanks for supporting our journalism. Subscribe right here.
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