For the first four years that the Taliban were back in power in Afghanistan, Mahbouba Seraj did whatever she could to keep her shelter for abused women open. But seven months ago, the 34 women and girls under Ms. Seraj’s protection – ranging from newborns to women in their 80s – were roughly shoved onto buses and driven away anyway.
Ms. Seraj, who, at 78, is considered the godmother of the women’s rights movement in Afghanistan, says her shelter was a victim both of the Taliban’s violent misogyny and fading international interest in her country.
While hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled ahead of the Taliban’s return to power on Aug. 15, 2021, Ms. Seraj decided to stay in Kabul and continue her fight even after the United States and its allies withdrew from the country, ending a 20-year military presence.
When Mahbouba Seraj gave this interview in Kabul in September, 2021, the Taliban had ruled the city for just over a month. Since then, she has done what she can to continue advocating for women.Asmaa Waguih/The Globe and Mail
A co-founder of the Afghan Women’s Network, Ms. Seraj initially believed that she could use her influence to convince the Taliban not to reimpose the harsh restrictions on women that had made the group an international pariah in the 1990s, the last time they held power in the country.
After she lost the big battles – the Taliban swiftly moved to once more bar women from public spaces and to exclude girls from receiving education beyond Grade 6 – Ms. Seraj narrowed her focus to protecting the women who lived under her care in the building at the back of her Kabul home.
She complied with endless bureaucracy and cheerfully co-operated when the Taliban conducted snap inspections of her property.
Then, in December, the Taliban shut the shelter down anyway.
“They just came and took the women, and of course they used force. They just said nobody, no NGO, has the right to have a shelter for women,” Ms. Seraj said in a telephone interview. The closing of the shelter, the last of its kind in Afghanistan, has not been previously reported.
Ms. Seraj fears that the Taliban, instead of caring for the women, has returned them to their abusive husbands and families. She hasn’t been allowed to see any of the women since.
“I’ve been asking every single week. Sometimes every day of the week. The situation really is terrible.”
Ms. Seraj says the situation for Afghanistan’s women is now just as dire as it was in the 1990s.
The shocking part for her is that the West - which spent two decades supporting NGOs such as the Afghan Women’s Network, and encouraging Afghan women and girls to get an education – just walked away and let it happen.
While she agrees with the position of Western governments that have closed their embassies and refused to deal with the Taliban government, she says the parallel decision to suspend all direct foreign aid has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the country, while also crippling what remains of civil society in the country.
“We cannot work. My NGO is one of the oldest NGOs that’s standing still in Afghanistan, but we are not getting any support.”
Canada, like many other Western governments, closed its embassy in 2021 and now sends aid to Afghanistan only via the United Nations and other large international organizations.
Brittany Fletcher, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, said the government’s position was that there could be “no normalization of relations with the Taliban until there is tangible progress on human rights, inclusive governance, and the protection of fundamental freedoms.”
The Canadian embassy in Kabul was deserted, and under Taliban guard, when The Globe visited in the fall of 2021.Asmaa Waguih/The Globe and Mail
The Taliban’s treatment of women is an issue that divides even within the Taliban. Those who study the movement say it has never been a monolith, and that a more pragmatic faction of the Taliban – largely based in and around the capital city of Kabul – would be willing to loosen restrictions on women if it brought Western recognition and aid money.
The disappearance of foreign assistance – which accounted for 75 per cent of public spending in the country before the Taliban takeover – triggered a collapse five years ago that pushed millions of Afghans who had been living on the edge into even deeper poverty.
The country’s overall economy has rebounded since then, growing a surprising 4.8 per cent last year despite Western sanctions and international isolation. But a swelling population – the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration says more than six million Afghan refugees who had been living in Pakistan and Iran have been forced home since 2023 – means that the country’s GDP per capita actually fell 5.6 per cent last year, despite the overall growth.
Analysts say the conservative leadership of the Taliban – headed by the movement’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who is based in the southern city of Kandahar – isn’t looking to correct course.
“The Emir has consolidated power, centralized power a lot, and he and his inner circle are of the belief that they need to impose these strict rules for the betterment of Afghans – and if the cost of that is isolation from the international world, especially from Western countries, then so be it,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a Kabul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.
The Taliban’s main claim to success over the past five years, Mr. Bahiss said, is that they have managed to impose peace inside the country after more than four decades of warfare. (Although Pakistan has carried out a series of deadly strikes on Afghanistan this year in response to attacks on its territory by the Pakistani Taliban.)
The Taliban faction in Kandahar province – where this fighter is burning illicit drugs – leans more conservative than Kabul’s, which is a source of friction in the movement.Sanaullah Seiam/AFP via Getty Images
With no external rivals in sight, Mullah Akhundzada has signalled that his biggest worry is the growing divide inside the Taliban itself. The split between the Kandahar conservatives and the moderates in Kabul came to the fore last September when Mullah Akhundzada ordered the shutdown of internet and mobile networks in the country.
After three days, during which Afghanistan was effectively severed from the outside world, the networks were reconnected without explanation. The Kabul faction of the Taliban is widely believed to have been behind the reversal.
Mr. Bahiss said pragmatists within the Taliban look to Syria – where armed Islamists have also swept to power – as an alternative model.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has avoided introducing measures that could be seen as extremist by Western governments, and has been rewarded with the lifting of most international sanctions against his country.
The hard-line Taliban leadership, however, believes they don’t need to change, and that the world will come to them. Their government has already gained formal recognition from Russia, and has growing trade relationships with China and Iran.
“I think the Taliban, from their perspective, they’re quite happy,” Mr. Bahiss said. “They believe the region is already engaging with them, and the rest of the world will have no choice but to engage with them if they show they have staying power.”
Mahbouba Seraj, now 78, is unsure whether to continue her struggle in Afghanistan.Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images
As the West turns away, and the Taliban grows more comfortable in power, Ms. Seraj fears the picture will only get darker for Afghanistan and particularly its women.
After almost a quarter-century of fighting for change, she admitted she’s thinking about giving up and moving to the United States to be closer to the rest of her family. The world, she said, has broken the promise it made five years ago not to forget Afghanistan.
“I cannot fight this war alone. How am I going to fight it? There’s no money. My office is hanging by a hair. There’s nothing left,” she said.
Over the phone line, it sounded like she was fighting back tears. “I gave it everything I had.”
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The Decibel podcast
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul in 2021, Afghan journalists who used to work with The Globe knew they were at risk – so colleagues abroad started planning their escape. Foreign correspondent Mark MacKinnon spoke with The Decibel about how they did it with help from Ukrainian special forces. Subscribe for more episodes.
Video: The talk of Afghanistan
The call-in show on Amu TV, a station run by exiled journalists, gives Afghans – and even the Taliban themselves – a place to speak freely about how their country lives now. The Globe paid a visit to their Virginia studio and spoke with a Canadian backing their work.
Yuri Panin/The Globe and Mail