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The mother handed Sarabi a bowl of yogurt and asked her to give it to the hostess of the neighbor's house. Sarabi walked over and saw the beautiful woman sitting on the balcony, crying and cutting her hair with scissors. Sarabi asked her why she did that. The woman said that her hair was the root of her life's troubles, and her husband had just tied her to the balcony pillar by her hair and beat her.

Habiba Sarabi, who was less than 10 years old, failed to save the woman. But half a century later, she carries the greatest hope for Afghan women. As the first female governor in Afghan history and the only permanent female representative during the 2021 Afghan internal peace talks, Sarabi is almost the only Afghan woman who has seriously discussed the topic of women's rights with the Taliban top brass.

Habiba Sarabi (second from right). Photo provided by the interviewee

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered the Afghan capital of Kabul and established a new national regime. In the three years since then, Sarabi has been involved in the Doha negotiation process in which the international community has pushed the Taliban government to protect women's rights and achieve inclusive governance. The latest round of Doha consultations was held in July this year.

In early 2024, Stanikzai, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Taliban government of Afghanistan, admitted in an exclusive interview with China Newsweek: "The longer (the issue of women's rights) is delayed, the greater our losses will be. Without women, no country or nation can make progress."

The plight of Afghan women has long historical roots. Sarabi witnessed domestic violence against her female neighbor at the end of the Shah dynasty half a century ago. Although historians today call it Afghanistan's "last stable period," if you put aside this filter, the discrimination and violence suffered by women at that time were far worse than today. In the 20 years from 2002 to 2021, the Afghan "republican government" also failed to promote women's empowerment, but instead allowed the Taliban and its ideology to gain wider support.

The core difficulties faced by Afghan women vary in each period, but resistance, bargaining and compromise are the unchanging main lines. "Women are born feminists, but the theories and forms of feminism are different. I always try to act moderately and try not to be an overly radical feminist, and promote the safety and interests of Afghan women in a pragmatic way," Sarabi said in an exclusive interview with China Newsweek.

The "secret teacher" sitting on the carpet

Covering their books with black burqas, the girls quickly passed through the Taliban soldiers' checkpoints and gathered in an inconspicuous house. They were nervous and excited, doing serious preparation. This could be an English, math or science class, or it could be a distance learning.

Without contact with the actors of secret education, it is difficult for the outside world to imagine the systematicness and seriousness of these programs. "We are implementing high-standard education programs and discussing with governments such as Qatar the possibility of issuing certificates and diplomas for these secret programs," said 67-year-old Sarabi.

Since the Taliban issued a ban on female education in December 2022, secret schools have been established across Afghanistan. Now, Sarabi is thinking about how to coordinate these schools, recruit more teachers of science subjects such as biology and chemistry, and conduct teaching quality assessments.

Girls in a rural school in Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan, June 18, 2023. Photo/Visual China

Sarabi did not disclose the scale of the population covered by secret education. However, another activist working on this project, Kaval, estimated that about 5% of Afghan women of school age can access these programs. This means that various secret schools may have reached tens of thousands of Afghan families.

The seemingly incredible task is a matter of practice for Sarabi, Kawar and others. 28 years ago, the secret school was the starting point for their participation in Afghan politics. Sarabi was originally a hematologist in Kabul and also taught at a medical school. In the 1990s, Afghanistan's internal affairs were in chaos, hospitals often could not pay wages, and warlords coming and going in Kabul regarded women as animals. Sarabi was threatened many times for not wearing a burqa. But she still stayed at home until the Taliban took control of Kabul and her 12-year-old daughter could no longer go to school.

Sarabi fled to Peshawar, Pakistan with her three children. In the following five years, she hid the funds she raised in a burqa, secretly crossed the border, and ran around Afghanistan, coordinating nearly 100 secret schools in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Nangarhar and other places to supervise the teaching quality. Her husband offered to prepare a donkey for Sarabi, but she refused: "Other Afghan women walk across the mountains."

The real reason for the refusal may be related to funding. She needs to find female teachers with rich teaching experience in various places, provide them with wages, pens, paper, blackboards, and carpets, "because you don't need to buy chairs to sit on the floor." The teacher uses his home as a school. In order to avoid attracting the attention of the Taliban, each female student needs to attend classes secretly and individually.

More than 20 years later, the difficulties faced by secret education remain similar. In the past year, two projects handled by Sarabi were interrupted due to lack of funds. Since electricity and Internet are not easy to obtain, girls taking online courses are forced to gather together for classes, increasing the risk of exposure.

Every day, Sarabi worries that a teacher or student will be discovered by Taliban soldiers. She still remembers the difficult five years when a secret teaching site was exposed, resulting in the imprisonment of a teacher and her husband. Fortunately, the teacher was eventually released after mediation by community elders. But now, rumors are that if teachers and students are discovered, the consequences will be much more serious.

“Respect is one thing, support is another”

After the end of the first Taliban rule, Sarabi became famous for her experience in leading secret education. She served as the Minister of Women's Affairs in the "Republican Government" and stepped down in 2005. President Karzai was very happy with her and promised that she could go to "any position she wanted." He suggested that Sarabi be an ambassador, but Sarabi did not want to be "exiled."

"I want to be governor," she said.

At that time, there were three female officials seeking to become the first female governor of Afghanistan. An unexpected event made Sarabi the only candidate. In 2003, Vida Samazai, an Afghan-American young woman, became the first Afghan woman to participate in a beauty pageant since 1974. She participated in the competition in the United States and caused an uproar in her home country because she appeared in a bikini. In an interview with foreign media, Sarabi chose a compromise position. She said that Vida had the right to participate in the beauty pageant, but she "could not represent Afghan society."

Karzai "greatly appreciated" the speech. Many local leaders who had little interest in women's rights also came to Sarabi's office and called her a "chaste and glorious woman." In 2005, Sarabi received unanimous support from the cabinet and began her eight-year career as governor of Bamiyan Province, where the Bamiyan Buddhas are located. Karzai felt that Sarabi could use her good relations with the international community to benefit the people of Bamiyan.

There is no lack of controversy among Afghan female activists about Sarabi's words and deeds. But no one denies that Sarabi's methods are always effective in this land. One of the best examples is that in Bamiyan, she proposed to link the food aid of the United Nations World Food Program with the issue of female education. The more female students a family has going to school, the more food rewards they will receive.

"Poverty is always the main obstacle to women's rights," Sarabi explained. Many families do not allow their daughters to go to school so that they can help with farm work and housework. When she took office in 2005, the proportion of female students in primary and secondary schools in Bamiyan Province was 34%. By 2014, the figure had risen to 43%, the highest in Afghanistan, even higher than the 40% in the capital Kabul.

July 2, 2024, Kabul, Afghanistan, female tailors in the Afghan Women's Business Center. Photo/Visual China

Ten years after leaving office, Sarabi prefers to recall these specific tasks rather than the symbolic significance and honor of being the first female governor. An Afghan media person commented that Sarabi's value to Afghanistan lies in this: the presence of women in beauty salons on the streets of Kabul, in fashion advertisements or in the parliament cannot make the daughter of a farmer in a remote mountainous area think that she is also an "equal person".

"Sarabi's contribution is not symbolic, but it has enabled Bamiyan to have more literate women, who have a say in family life and have the opportunity to be free from domestic violence," said the aforementioned media person.

But there are more regrets and unwillingness. Sarabi's most ambitious "Mothers of Peace" plan ultimately failed to take even the first step. "My idea is that if a mother can stop her children from participating in armed conflict and tell them to get an education, the mother will play a key role in the peace process," Sarabi explained. In Afghanistan, many mothers believe that it is "brave behavior" for their children to pick up guns and kill people. She hopes to change this situation through a series of lectures and resource network building in rural areas. But Sarabi did not receive support from the presidential office and senior government officials. When asked, Sarabi was reluctant to talk about the specific contradictions, but just said: "Respect (me) is one thing, support is another."

Some Afghan female officials have found that they are, to some extent, seen by the leaders of the "Republican Government" as tools for "trading" with the international community, rather than helpers in promoting women's empowerment. Female activist Kawar was once a candidate for the Minister of Women's Affairs, and the last president of the "Republican Government", Ghani, always spoke to her in English during the interview. "I am very puzzled. The official languages ​​of Afghanistan are Persian and Pashto. Why do we have to speak in English? How many ministers in the cabinet know English?"

Once international aid is obtained through so-called "social progress achievements", these senior male officials will quickly change their faces. Once, Kawar attended a public health planning meeting jointly held by the World Health Organization and the Afghan Ministry of Health. The WHO proposed several urgent priorities, including preventing diarrhea, female malnutrition and anemia. "But our minister said, 'WHO is trying to deceive us! Why should we care about anemia!', and they instead provided a long list of vehicles that needed to be purchased, buildings that needed to be built, and salaries that needed to be paid."

As a realist, Sarabi is well aware of the rules of the game. She pointed out that Afghanistan has been fighting proxy wars since the days of Najibullah (President of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation), and the collapse of the country is the result of various political games imposed on Afghanistan. Those countries that entered Afghanistan claiming to support "democracy and human rights" essentially ignored Afghanistan's social problems. "No one really pays attention to Afghan women. They only know that 'Afghanistan' means 'burqa'," Sarabi said.

According to UNICEF data, before the Taliban came to power again in 2021, there were 3.7 million out-of-school children in Afghanistan, 60% of whom were girls. Many interviewees pointed out that it was a small number of Afghan women who struggled to take advantage of the limited support from the international community for Afghanistan's modernization that allowed Afghanistan's women's rights to be slowly restored and improved during the 20 years of corruption and chaos in the "republican era."

After becoming Afghanistan's first female governor, Sarabi finally accomplished what she had been unable to do at age 10: rescue her female neighbor. She set up a special committee against domestic violence, passed an anti-domestic violence law, established a special unit in the police station to deal with gender-based violence, and organized legal knowledge competitions in schools. One of the winning girls used the prize money to buy a motorcycle - the first motorcycle owned by a woman in the Bamiyan region.

'Two different Taliban'

On August 15, 2021, Sarabi met Stanekzai, deputy director of the Taliban's Doha Political Office, in the lobby of a hotel in Doha. Both knew that the negotiations were over: a few hours ago, the Taliban army entered Kabul, and Ghani, the last president of the "Republican Government", abandoned his subordinates and fled ahead of schedule with a few close confidants.

"We (the new government) will respect women very much," Stanekzai said to Sarabi. "I don't believe it," Sarabi immediately asked him if he really believed what he said. Stanek answered affirmatively that he did.

In early 2024, Stanikzai, who has become the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Taliban government, once again elaborated on his views on women in an exclusive interview with China Newsweek. He said that the deprivation of women's rights means the deprivation of the rights of more than half of the people in society; Islam and traditional Afghan culture both believe that education is a natural right and responsibility of women. "Of course, our religious law also has some rules about women."

Stanekzai is a close confidant of Baradar, the political leader of the Taliban. He is fluent in English and was in charge of negotiations with the United States during the first Taliban rule. He also went to Washington. Every Taliban leader has such an "international" assistant. Some of them have lived in Qatar for a long time and sent their daughters to local schools.

In February 2020, then-US President Trump and the Taliban reached an agreement on the gradual withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Since then, Afghanistan has been negotiating for more than a year, trying to peacefully transition to the participation of the Taliban in the new government. As the US military no longer participates in the fighting, officials and warlords of the "Republican Government" who are well aware of their own capabilities are trying to find a way out for themselves, while Baradar and his assistants are trying to convince everyone that the Taliban's rule this time will be different from 20 years ago.

But people at the negotiation table gradually discovered that Stanekzai was just an exception. Behind closed doors, most Taliban representatives ignored Sarabi and chatted loudly while the female representatives were speaking. The only thing Sarabi could do to fight back was to work with her colleagues to arrange for at least one woman to attend every meeting, big or small, to "make the other party uncomfortable."

Afghan politician Sayyid Hadi once led the anti-Soviet guerrilla war and established a deep friendship with the Haqqani family, the military leaders of the Taliban. With this relationship, Hadi rescued dozens of girls kidnapped by the Taliban during the Republican period. In his view, there are "two different Taliban" in Afghanistan. On the one hand, in order to continue to recruit religious extremists over the past 20 years, the Taliban strongly criticized the "republican government" for allowing boys and girls to attend the same class; on the other hand, because the "republican government" is unpopular, more and more Afghans with different positions have joined the Taliban. "The Taliban leadership hopes to retain both types of people at the same time."

However, the Taliban is essentially a military organization, and the hard-line commanders on the front line took the initiative from the beginning. Many interviewees revealed that Taliban spies had already identified female "targets" before the troops entered the city. From female parliamentarians, female officials to female lawyers, many relatives and friends of various women who have appeared in public have received interrogation calls from the Taliban in order to verify the identity and residence of the targets.

After August 15, 2021, the residences of female officials in Kabul were frequently searched. When they drove out alone, they were stopped by Taliban soldiers: "Call your male relatives and ask them to drive you out before you can go out." Under this circumstance, although the new government repeatedly retained them, in less than a month, most of the female directors of government departments and various female employees in the city left their posts.

Outside of Kabul's elite, most Afghan women were not initially hit so directly. Hasina, a master's student in architecture, suspended classes at her university for several weeks and then reopened. Female students were required to wear headscarves "correctly" and could only be taught by female teachers. But there were not many female teachers in the architecture department, so they were still taught by male teachers, but they were no longer allowed to communicate with each other outside of class.

"We followed all their instructions, we just wanted to learn," Hasina recalled. But the situation is getting worse every month. Advertisements for women on the streets of Kabul were smeared, and more and more towns and villages were reporting that women were not allowed to go out alone or go to school. In May 2022, the new government "recommended that women wear burqas from head to toe." Since 2022, more and more religious preaching in line with radical ideology has been carried out in various places, each time reinforcing the negative views of local elders and officials on gender issues.

In addition, as time went on, the international community failed to provide a roadmap for recognizing the Taliban, and some countries even froze Afghanistan's national assets. This made the moderates who pursued "international recognition" further lose power in the power struggle within the Taliban. Hardliners began to claim that international recognition was not important. In the end, the issue of international recognition even had the opposite effect. "Every time the international community rejected the Taliban's demands, they exerted pressure in the opposite direction by further restricting women's rights," said Kawar.

Most of the Taliban elites who disagreed with the hardliners gradually moved towards compromise and silence. In November 2022, gyms, public baths and parks in Afghanistan were no longer open to women. Female activist Fahmi protested to a Taliban police chief, who agreed to open a separate public bath for women whose homes had no water and electricity supply, but a day later, the bath was closed again. "I called him and he said he couldn't do anything. He opposed closing the bath, but was ordered to do so," Fahmi recalled.

In this internal game that lasted for more than a year, the only reversal occurred in March 2022, when the government announced that women across the country could receive education. But on December 20, 2022, the Taliban government issued an order to suspend women's right to receive higher education. Hasina and her classmates went to the school to verify the news, but were blocked outside by Taliban soldiers armed with live ammunition. Since then, decrees have been issued to suspend women from entering primary and secondary schools, training schools and non-governmental organizations to study and work.

“Nothing is impossible”

In July 2024, Sarabi refused to attend the latest round of Doha negotiations.

"I had several meetings with UN Deputy Secretary-General DiCarlo. She promised us that she would ensure that Afghan women representatives participated in the third round of Doha talks. But in the end, when we were invited to attend the meeting, we learned that only a side meeting on women's rights was arranged during the negotiations, rather than the main meeting attended by representatives from all countries." Sarabi believes that this is not in the interests of Afghan women and also damages the political image of the United Nations.

EU Special Representative for Afghanistan Nikolaosnov explained that excluding Sarabi from the formal meeting was "the price paid for further engagement (with the Taliban)". But Sarabi felt that Doha should be a platform for all parties and the Taliban to find solutions to problems together, and the issue of women's rights "is a major issue".

Yusuf, who served as Pakistan's National Security Advisor from 2021 to 2022, is an important participant in the Doha process. He pointed out that the Doha negotiations are essentially a game, and the international community has tried to "trade" women's rights with the Taliban through international recognition, financial assistance, etc., but failed. "The way Taliban leaders think is very different from you and me. We must understand what is important to them and what (plans) can change their minds."

The aforementioned member of the Afghan Council of Religious Scholars suggested that the different dimensions of women's rights could be appropriately divided, starting with the priorities. For example, would the Taliban agree to establish a technical committee to revise the education structure and teaching methods and regulate women's enrollment? "If they agree, more people from the religious and educational circles could be allowed to join the committee to make it more inclusive."

A university campus design released by Afghan architect Halimi, who studied in Germany, emphasized "respecting Afghan norms and values", achieving "gender and physical separation" in campus construction, and establishing separate female departments. He said this is a plan to help women get "similar educational opportunities as men" at present.

The efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in recent years have been seen as a model by all parties. According to the Taliban government's regulations, female employees in the health sector are not affected by the work ban. According to 2022 data, this means that more than 3,000 female medical staff have been "exempted." On this basis, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Taliban have started communication on the issue of women receiving medical education.

"From the Taliban's perspective, they cannot allow their wives and daughters to receive treatment or examinations from male doctors, so they need female doctors to serve female patients. So, according to this logic, they should allow women to go to middle school and university, receive medical education, and then become doctors." Fillon, the director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, who just stepped down in October 2023, said that the vast majority of Taliban members "can understand this logic", so "they are debating fiercely to find ways to reconcile the contradictions."

However, Sarabi and Kawar disagree on the gradual and compromising negotiations. Kawar is worried that the long-term deprivation of women's rights has caused the living environment of Afghan women to deteriorate rapidly. In this environment, it is difficult for any "special zone" to survive. She often hears complaints from female medical staff who are forced to give up their jobs.

A female midwife who was allowed to work in a public hospital was arrested by Taliban soldiers on her way home from get off work and imprisoned until her family paid to rescue her. "The Taliban soldiers accused her of not complying with the headscarf regulations, but she was dressed very conservatively." Kawar said that this was a deliberate provocation by Taliban hardliners. After that, the female nurse felt completely insecure and could no longer go out to work.

What's worse is that women are facing more and more pressure from within their families. Hasina just wanted to continue studying, "but some male elders in the family said I was a prostitute." Her boyfriend's parents also reprimanded her for putting people around her in danger, "In the end, they didn't attend our wedding."

This is related to the Taliban's "guilt by association" policy. If women protest against the authorities' policies, their husbands, fathers and brothers may also be arrested. This is a sophisticated governance technique that turns every man into an "accomplice" in monitoring his wife and daughter. Activists have even found that some female protesters who were rescued from Taliban prisons were killed in the following weeks by their own family members.

The latest report released by UN Women in August this year shows that 68% of Afghan women have "poor" or "very poor" mental health. It is precisely because of these tendencies that Sarabi, who has always been pragmatic, insists on the integrity of the negotiations. "If negotiations begin, we must discuss the basic rights of women."

Regarding this view, the aforementioned religious scholars and Taliban government insiders suggested that the Islamic religious community could strengthen communication with the Taliban leaders on this overall issue. The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt, Taib, who is quite influential in the Arab world, has publicly stated many times that the Taliban's restrictions are inconsistent with the Sharia, which clearly states that "men and women, from the cradle to the grave, must pursue knowledge."

"Religious circles in various countries can strengthen dialogue with influential religious departments within the Taliban, such as the Ministry of Punishment and Promotion of Virtue, the Ministry of Pilgrimage and Endowment, and the High Court," the aforementioned religious scholar pointed out, "because almost all Taliban leaders are religious people. We need well-reasoned jurisprudence to encourage the Taliban to listen to and understand these views, otherwise everything will be useless."

Although the road ahead is long, Sarabi is still confident about the future of Afghan women. "Nothing is impossible. When the mujahideen and warlords occupied Kabul in the 1990s, their attitude towards women's issues was no better than that of the Taliban, but later, the second generation of these rulers received education, and some of them became supporters of women's rights."

Back in August three years ago, Hadi knocked on the door of Taliban military leader Khalil Haqqani, who had just settled in Kabul. Hadi said that if Afghan mothers were educated, the current situation in Afghanistan would be very different, and the mothers' knowledge system and ideology would have a profound impact on their children. Haqqani nodded and said, "Warm welcome!"

(At the request of the interviewee, Hasina is a pseudonym. Sakhi Rezaie, Chen Jialin and Huo Siyi also contributed to this article)

author:Cao Ran