WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT AFGHAN WOMEN?

by Helen Benedict

“If we -- if any Afghan women - are sent back now, the Taliban will take our lives.”

So said a young Afghan woman I know when we spoke the week of Trump’s recent crackdown on Afghan asylum seekers and refugees. Yet, even though the legacy press is running article after article about the cruelty of Trump’s action, I’ve seen nothing about the particular horror of sending women back to the Taliban. So, I’m writing about it here.

Trump’s excuse for this new crackdown was, as we know, the tragic shooting by an Afghan man of two young members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. this past November: Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, only 20 years old, who died of her wounds; and Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, who is still in hospital as I write.

Yet the alleged shooter is only one man. Many Afghan refugees and asylum seekers here are journalists like my friend, teachers, or people who worked for the former Afghan government or for us as interpreters. They were our helpers and allies. In some cases they saved American lives. Many are women, and a great many are children.

Furthermore, immigrants from anywhere, Afghans included, commit far fewer crimes than American born citizens.

But Trump and his anti-immigrant minions are not interested in facts. So, predictably enough, he seized on the shooting as an excuse to paint all Afghans as criminals and to freeze their chances of gaining asylum, thus violating their due process rights and their right to protection under international law.

This new crackdown, which now applies not only to Afghans but to asylum seekers and refugees from 19 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries as well -- the latest target is Somalia -- could destroy the chances of asylum seekers in the U.S. to find peace and safety. But that’s not all, for now the administration is also revisiting and possibly upending the cases of people who have already been granted asylum and even have Green Cards, suddenly sending their lives and livelihoods into chaos and terror.

This is the case for the young friend I quote above and her sister -- I cannot give their full names or where they live out of concern for their safety. They were teenage television personalities back in Afghanistan, advocating education for girls with a campaign they called Let Afghan Girls Learn. But once the U.S. withdrew its forces in August 2021, leaving the Taliban to take Afghanistan by storm, the very fact that the sisters were successful, feminist and pro-education made them targets. So they had to flee for their lives.

With the help of U.S. contacts, they managed to board a flight and escape, but were forced to leave behind their mother, little brother, and all the rest of their family and friends. The sisters were only 20 and 22 years old at the time. They missed their family terribly.

“We Lost It All”

“We had a beautiful home in Afghanistan,” the eldest sister told me recently over the phone. “When the Taliban took over, it was five months after I graduated from university. I had a good job, a salary, property. Maybe we didn’t have all the advantages we have now in the U.S., but it was our country and we loved it. We lost it all.”

She and her sister have been living in the U.S. for four and a half years now. They both have white collar jobs, they pay taxes, and they have bought and renovated a condominium. One has even started her own clothing brand. After years of waiting, they were finally reunited with their mother and brother last December. Today, the family lives together.

“We went through so much,” the eldest sister told me. “Here, we had to start from zero, from scratch, but the people here in America helped us, welcomed us. I love the U.S. as much as my own country now. I feel like I belong here. My home, my work, my co-workers, my community. And we won asylum before our visas expired, so we have never lived here illegally for even one second.”

Now, however, she and her family are terrified.

“Taliban rule has erased women from public life.”

Any Afghan refugees who worked for the previous government or for Americans, or who lived in the West at all, will likely be killed should they return to Afghanistan. And should they escape that fate, they would still face a country plagued by drought and food shortages, dire unemployment, homophobia, violations of human rights, and so little water that people are dying.

Women and girls, however, face a particularly horrible set of circumstances, for under the Taliban, they have lost their rights and even their freedom to move. As well known as this fact may be, it is worth reiterating exactly what a woman or girl would face should she be returned there and escape immediate execution.

Girls are no longer allowed to go to secondary school or university. Instead, they are subject to forced marriage and sexual slavery.

Girls and women are rarely permitted to leave their homes. They are banned from public parks, gyms, sports clubs, and even from playing any sports at all.

Imagine not being allowed to walk in a park or exercise.

Women are barred from pursuing careers or working at any but the most menial of jobs.

Women are forbidden to travel by themselves or, in some places, even to venture outside without a male family member as an escort, which puts widows and single women in an impossible position. Because of these rules, many women won’t be able to see a doctor or give birth in a hospital. As a result, female mortality is soaring.

Women must cover every inch of their skin, including hands, faces, and eyes under burqas. Oh, and if you are a woman, you are not allowed to sing, speak loudly, or laugh in public.

As a United Nations bulletin put it, “Taliban rule has erased women from public life.”

One would hope that awareness of these brutalities would make other countries want to protect Afghan women if the U.S. won’t. Not so.

Just this past year, 20 European countries pressured the European Commission to allow them to deport Afghans whether they wanted to leave or not. These cruel (and very white) countries are worth listing: Norway, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden -- and Ireland.

That Ireland, celebrated for its divestment from Israel and pro-Palestinian stance, put itself on this list is particularly disturbing.

So far, this European effort to deport Afghans has not prevailed, as the only country in the world to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government is Russia, so there is no legal way to forge a deal with the Taliban to take back its refugees.

Yet the fact remains that these Western and supposedly humanitarian nations have no compunction about throwing Afghan women back into slavery, imprisonment and early death. And the media at large is paying no attention.

The illegality of forcibly repatriating Afghans clearly doesn’t bother all countries, by the way. Pakistan deported some one million Afghan refugees back to the Taliban’s clutches this year, regardless of how long they had lived in Pakistan or what they had done there. And Iran expelled more than half a million Afghans over a mere 16 days this past summer. All this adds up to over 1.9 million Afghans -- including girls and women -- who have been forcibly repatriated in little more than seven months.

Nobody, it seems, wants Afghans anymore.

The sisters are just now beginning to know what that feels like. As the eldest said to me near the end of our last conversation, “Even if I wanted to go back, the Taliban wouldn’t let me because they don’t allow single women to hold passports anymore.”

Helen Benedict, the author of several books on refugees, including her forthcoming novel, The Soldier’s House, is a professor of journalism at Columbia University.