CONVERSATION
mous pressure from the international community, Taliban leaders initially sug- gested it was all temporary. Until this spring. Six months into their takeover, in a show of hard-line power, the Taliban
government issued a rapid succession of repressive edicts, as if turning the clock back to their harsh rule in the 1990s. Women could no longer mingle with men in public parks and they were banned from flying without a male guardian; for men, beards and turbans were now mandatory for government workers; the BBC and other media could no longer broadcast news and shows into Afghanistan. Perhaps most shocking: The Taliban broke their promise to Afghans and the international community and barred girls from returning to school after sixth grade. All of this Koofi could have predicted. “Because the Taliban know that if they allow women to access the idea of
freedom, that will put in danger the Taliban’s ideology. And what I’m saying is that education, enlightenment, progress—all of these principles—are in con- tradiction with Taliban’s ideology,” she says. “Because they’re using religion as a weapon.” As a member of Parliament and the first woman to rise to the role of deputy
speaker, Koofi has famously survived two assassination attempts. Like many highly visible female leaders, she risked everything in the fight for women’s rights. And over decades of war, Koofi lost her father, brother and husband. Gailani is nearly a generation older than Koofi. She was born into a peaceful
Afghanistan in the 1950s. Her father was a worldly man, head of a Sufi order and leader of the most liberal party among the mujahideen who fiercely resis- ted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Gailani was at university outside Afghanistan in the ’70s when the commu-
nist coup, backed by the Russians, overturned the Afghan government. When she returned after 9/11, she was a scholar of Islam and the law, and for years the president of Afghanistan’s Red Crescent Society. When the Taliban swept into power again, Gailani was in Doha, the city
where Afghanistan’s peace delegation had spent more than a year negotiating with Taliban leaders. Gailani quickly flew back to Kabul. “If I were a little bit sane, I would say goodbye to politics and just be an old woman and look after myself,” she says. “But this is not happening.” Koofi had the opposite experience. At home in Kabul with her two college- age daughters, she was confronted by Taliban soldiers at her door. She was un-
Opposite page: Students attend a secondary school in Nawabad, Afghanistan, in November 2021—girls are now barred from studying beyond sixth grade; below: protesters march in Kabul after the Taliban announced its all-male interim government.
der house arrest for two weeks before Taliban leaders bowed to pressure and allowed her to fly out of the country. Koofi and Gailani are now on the
steering committee of a new interna- tional organization created in re- sponse to the Taliban takeover: the Women’s Forum on Afghanistan. I spoke again to Fawzia Koofi and Fatima Gailani when both were in London. (This interview has been edited for publication.)
FAWZIA KOOFI : I didn’t want to leave. A life abroad is not something I am looking for. I still want to be with my people. But it was not possible because the Taliban were extremely harsh. … My daughters, I was wor- ried for their safety, because any young girl would be at risk of assault, harassment. You know there are sto- ries of forced and early marriages of young girls to the Taliban command- ers. So I decided to leave, and it was a very, very tough decision. Every day I’m with hope that tomorrow I will hear something positive and encour- aging, so that I [can] go back. FATIMA GAILANI : I was in Doha [when the Afghan government fell] and from Doha I went straight [back] to Kabul.
RENEE MONTAGNE: What were the circumstances there? GAILANI : Everyone, everyone, is saying exactly one thing, that look, there isn’t war anymore, so this is the best opportunity to be seized for a proper national reconciliation. For the time being, it doesn’t have
to be in an election. We have ancient methods of jirgas [gatherings of leaders] that people could send their representatives. So, it is not an impossible thing. It is just that the wheel is in the hand of Taliban, and they have to take the initiative.
MONTAGNE: On the other hand, the tradition is very male-oriented, how representation worked in the old way. It doesn’t have to be one person,
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