BAHARAN LAHIB

PARWAN_ Over the past twenty years, women across Afghanistan have struggled to obtain education, increase their political awareness, and prevent their rights from being violated. With the Taliban movement's return to power in 2021, women across the country rose up against the injustice and discrimination practiced against them, and began their own struggle.

A number of these women live in Parwan province; a province whose women showed courage and resilience before the Soviet invasion, during the resistance war, and during the first period of Taliban rule.

When one enters this province, talk of the resistance and courage of its women is repeated. However, fundamentalist forces have also infiltrated among the people, and tried to spread their ideas in society, which paved the way for the ignorance and illiteracy of a large segment of the population.

Despite that, the women of Parwan exploited the available opportunities, and raised their voices in protest in the streets and inside their homes against the Taliban's repression and restrictions. With their stance and struggle, they wrote another page of Afghan women's courage in the history of this dark era.

Our agency headed to one of the villages of Parwan and met with Lielma Noorshah, who expressed her concern about the arrest of women on charges of what the Taliban describes as "not wearing the hijab properly."

"Taliban Restrictions Force Women to Lose Their Jobs"

Lielma was working in one of the relief organizations, but with the Taliban movement's return to power, this organization was also closed because its activities were run by women. Despite losing her job, she still participates in protests against the Taliban's anti-woman policies.

About her life, Lielma Noorshah said: "My husband works as a teacher, and I was an employee in one of the organizations before Taliban rule. Like millions of other Afghan women, I was forced to lose my job. Now I spend most of my time on household affairs and agricultural work. However, I also continue my civil activities."

She spoke with determined anger about the arrest of women by the Ministry of "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" in Kabul. "I watched the videos circulating. All the women who appeared in these videos were wearing clothes in the style preferred by the Taliban; but it arrests women from time to time in Kabul and other provinces to create an atmosphere of fear and terror, so that everyone remains silent and people forget poverty, unemployment, and thousands of other tragedies, and all their concern becomes only protecting the women of their families."

Lielma Noorshah expressed her hope for the future of Afghan women. "I am confident that these women will one day become a nightmare for the Taliban, and that they will take the reins of power. On that day, the people of Afghanistan will experience freedom, democracy, and justice in its true meaning."