Women heading households endure torture and sexual harassment under Taliban rule
Razia’s children were hungry at home on the day she was picked up by the Taliban. She was working as a cook and cleaner in a house in Lashkar Gah city of Helmand province. Razia*, a 47-year-old sole breadwinner of her family of five, decided to return home earlier than usual because her employer had given her three cold loaves of bread and some leftover food.
After Razia had been walking for 10 minutes, a car of Taliban fighters pulled up next to her, and one of them ordered her put in the vehicle. “He called out ‘She is a prostitute’ and ordered them to take me and put me in the car,” recalls Razia to Zan Times. It was March 10, 2023, but Razia remembers the events of that day like they happened yesterday.
Razia repeatedly begged the Taliban not to arrest her, explaining that she was working for her children. But the Taliban did not accept her explanations and began humiliating and torturing her even before she got in the car. “They said to me ‘You must be a whore,’” she explains, “One of them gave me an electric shock with a metal rod on my chest and neck.” They also heaped insults on her: “They called my genitals by name and asked if it itches that I left the house?”
When she didn’t get into the Taliban car, they held her hands behind her head and shocked her on the back of her neck. “With the second shock, my body trembled and with the third shock, I could not control myself and my urine spilled into my pants,” she explains. They let her go only after the son of the homeowner for whom she was working came to her rescue.
Razia has been unable to work after that day. To meet her family’s needs, she’s been forced to borrow money. “That day, the landlord’s son saved me from the Taliban, but the Taliban told me not to go out to work anymore,” she says.
Female heads of the family like Razia are forced to accept the risk of working outside their houses to meet the needs of their children. Razia had done so for three years before that encounter with the Taliban. They do so even as the Taliban has imposed many restrictions on women’s work in Afghanistan and most women have lost in the formal economy. In December 2023, the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Aid (OCHA) reported that women heading families in Afghanistan are much more vulnerable than men in the same role due to their limited access to financial resources as well as education, and public and private decision-making.
The result is a deepening poverty in the country. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports that almost 85 percent of people in Afghanistan live on less than one dollar a day. And its report from January 2024 showed that the situation has worsened significantly since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, especially for women. OCHA believes that about 15.8 million people will face crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity in 2024.
The worsening financial situation of women and lack of financial independence means that not only are they far more reliant on male relatives, but they are increasingly at risk of domestic violence and sexual harassment. That is what occurred to 48-year-old Golnaz* after her husband died in April 2023. Unable to care for their eight daughters, she turned to help from her brother-in-law, who took advantage of the situation to sexually harass her. On the third day after her husband’s death, her brother-in-law asked her to sleep with him. When she refused, he beat and threatened, “I’ll kill you.”
Though he kept beating and threatening her, Golnaz continued to refuse his demands. Finally, she had no choice but to leave the house. “I couldn’t stand being beaten every day,” she tells Zan Times. “When I wanted to leave the house, he told me that I can’t take anything because I will come back like a dog.”
She and her daughters went to the home of her brothers but they didn’t welcome her back, and instead asked her to return to her brother-in-law. “They said that we cannot give you and your daughters bread. Either marry your brother-in-law or leave our house,” Golnaz recounts.
Many women in Afghanistan are in the same situation as Golnaz, and also face severe economic problems if they do not surrender to family violence. Another young widow is 36-year-old Molouda*, who lives in Andkhoy district in Faryab province. She’s been head of her family of four children after her husband’s death but has been plunged into poverty because her family have deprived her and her children of their inheritance rights. Molouda’s in-laws attacked her after she rejected her brother-in-law’s marriage proposal. “My father-in-law beat me, he said, ‘You are a disgrace. You must marry your brother-in-law,’” she says. “We will not allow you to live as you like.”
Five months ago, Molouda decided to leave her husband’s family. She works as a cleaner but such jobs are hard to find. “I pay 800 afghani a month for the house rent. The owner of the house says either pay rent or leave. I don’t have enough money to pay the rent. If my brother-in-law didn’t take my house from me, I wouldn’t be in this situation now,” she says.
Her hair has turned white because of the stresses and problems she’s dealt with after her husband’s death. She’s also developed mental problems: “I work one day a week and this does not cover the family’s expenses. When I become desperate, I cry. I am very nervous. I have gone crazy. I don’t know what to do with my little children in this situation.”
In August 2023, the Taliban’s Ministry of Martyrs and Disabled Affairs said that 640,000 disabled persons, widows, and orphans are registered in the country and that three-quarters of the ministry’s 13.5 billion afghani budget goes to the needy. Yet, few of the female heads of families or widows who spoke to Zan Time have received any of those funds.
Golnaz now lives with her daughters in an old one-room house. She worries about her future, as she can’t find enough food for her family. “In these two weeks, I have not cooked food for my children even once, we have only eaten dry bread,” she says. “I don’t know if we will be able to find food in the future.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writers. Sana Atef and Mahtab Safi are the pseudonyms of Zan Times journalists in Afghanistan.
