Not long ago, activist, artist and former Afghan refugee Nahid Shahalimi won. The women’s school she worked to establish in Afghanistan was endorsed by the current Afghan government, the Taliban.

Shahalimi has been working on the project for nearly six years, even before the Taliban hit the streets of Kabul in August. When the takeover took place, Shahalimi was first concerned with getting those most at risk out of the country – public activists, outspoken women’s rights activists and people with close ties to the government. ‘West.

But today, with the Taliban flag flying over Kabul, his goals have changed. “We can’t evacuate half the population of the country,” she said, “It’s not a realistic thing…what we can do is improve the life of this twenty-year-old who doesn’t know not the real Taliban; who only knows him from television and history books.

For a young adult woman currently living in Kabul, the Taliban seemed more like a relic of the past than a pressing threat. Since 2001, millions of girls have enrolled in school and adult women have engaged in active and public life in ways that were forbidden to them under the previous Taliban regime. The typical twenty-year-old Kabul woman is therefore experiencing life under a strict Islamic Sharia regime for the first time. “It’s going to be devastating, especially for young people,” Shahalimi said. “And we will cry. But while we’re grieving, we also need to be realistic about how we’re going to proceed after this.

For Shahalimi, being “realistic” translates into actions that will result in real effects. She urges people trying to help to put their energy and resources where they know they will have an impact, which does not include sending money to organizations where donations cannot be tracked. . “Most of these NGOs [sending money to Afghans] are assessed by the Taliban,” Shahalimi says, “every one of them is going to go through paperwork that will determine if it’s suitable for the new regime or if it’s too westernized for this new regime. With banks only just reopening after a full week of closures, she says the money being sent is unlikely to actually reach the intended recipients.

When she pitched her idea for the school (the name and details of which she could not reveal for security reasons), Shahalimi wanted to make sure she could survive under Taliban rule. At the time, Afghanistan was not under Taliban rule, but Shahalimi knew that could change quickly. (Although the Taliban were forced to disperse in 2001, they have rallied and regained power over the past two decades.) Signs of their growing influence have become increasingly evident in recent years, as the Girls’ education dropped drastically after 2014, and in 2020, when there was a 45% increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan, including a 13% increase in the number of women killed that year.

Shahalimi recognized this trend and acted on it. “I wanted to make sure we were doing something that, when the day came, [the Taliban] enters the country, they will allow it because it is under this cultural umbrella,” she says. Taliban law prohibits co-ed work or study, so an all-female school should be acceptable.

Essentially, Shahalimi is working with, rather than against, the Taliban to better support women’s rights. His decision to do so is based on a stark understanding of current reality; the war against the Taliban is lost. Women and girls in Afghanistan will lose far more rights than they have comfortably held for twenty years. “It’s something we all have to accept,” she says.

Although she is resigned to it, she is not demoralized by it.

Over the past few weeks, Shahalimi has been in communication with academic institutions working to keep these young women in schools. Universities based in Afghanistan are rearranging classrooms to accommodate gender segregation, in accordance with Taliban law. Already, single-sex, all-female schools and universities have been allowed to continue operating. Shahalimi knows that the lives of these students will not be the same, but she hopes that some of the progress made over the past twenty years can be sustained. “If you want [the Taliban] to accept and accept what you want them to understand, you have to speak the same language,” she says, “we speak to the fish of the land!

This comparison refers to what Shahalimi describes as the Taliban’s fundamental inability or unwillingness to understand human rights and equality the way the West understands them. She doesn’t believe the fight is to convince them of progressive ideals; the fight is to get the best result for those directly affected by the Taliban regime. So she’s not fighting for a coeducational school that teaches female students feminist history; rather, it fights – and succeeds – in creating a school that aligns with Taliban standards or, at the very least, will not directly oppose them.

Women today are an integral part of the Afghan economy and society, and the Taliban will not be able to simply ignore this reality, Shahalimi says:

“Winning a war and winning a country is one thing, leading the country is another. They need these young people and they need these women to go to work [e.g. women police officers]…and they said it. And from what I’ve heard on the pitch, they’ve delivered on their promise so far.

Although the Taliban have so far assured the media that the rights of women and girls will not be threatened, the reality on the ground suggests otherwise. The women are diverted from universities they have been attending for years and are beaten for not providing food to Taliban soldiers. Public images of women in makeup have been painted over or torn down, and many taxi drivers now refuse to take women in their cars. Some women who are very present on social networks are also forced to hide.

The global significance of the situation is not lost on Shahalimi, who was forced to flee Afghanistan as a child in the 1980s. Since then, she has dedicated her life to fighting for humanitarian efforts around the world. world, while advocating for the rights of women and girls wherever possible. For her, the rise to power of the Taliban is part of many other human rights challenges around the world. “A white man sat down at the decision-making table and decided that this deal would come at the expense of women and minorities,” Shahalimi said. “It’s the same thing – abortion laws, Poland, minority laws – everything is tied together. This is why Afghanistan is so important.

“Talking to the fish of the land” is not about turning these fish into birds; it’s about finding a way to talk about the sky to someone who’s never seen it. Although the Taliban do not hold an overtly Western, feminist or strongly progressive idea, Shahalimi does not let go of these ideals, prioritizing programs and actions that have a chance of survival. This is how she hopes to protect women in Afghanistan today.

Click on the picture below to watch the 25-minute interview on the Women’s eNews podcast:

About the Author: Gavi Klein, a senior at Brandeis University, is a 2021 Scholar in the Sy Syms* Women’s eNews Journalism Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Women’s eNews Fellowship Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial trainees in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

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