On 15 August, 2021, I got ready for work as usual. It wasn’t an ordinary morning. Province after province had fallen to the Taliban. But I still clung to the hope that negotiations might succeed. I didn’t realise how quickly my society could collapse.
I worked in Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission as a commissioner. Shortly after leaving my home, I got a call from our security unit: “Do not come to the office. Find somewhere safe.”
I returned home, packed some essentials and went to my parents’ house. On the streets of Kabul, everything was defined by fear. Ordinary people and armed military personnel alike were trying to escape, searching for somewhere that might offer sanctuary. We knew what was coming.
Walking through the capital, it felt as though the mere concept of hope had been eradicated. Even my feet seemed unable to carry me properly. I was a woman, a government official, a person with disabilities and a human rights advocate. I knew what Taliban rule meant for me, for my country, and particularly for Afghan women.
I experienced only the first 12 days from inside my country, because soon I, too, had to leave. But those days gave me a glimpse of what the fall meant.
Primarily, I witnessed fear. The questions were immediate and personal: Were we safe? Could we continue our lives as before? Should we hide? Should we leave? And, if we left, where could we possibly go?
Now we have arrived at the fifth anniversary of the fall of Kabul. Today, 15 August, is a date etched in the memory of every Afghan. It is a date that forces us to recognise what has happened to our country.
Under the Taliban’s emirate, I have watched Afghanistan being pushed towards an age of stone. This is a country with thousands of years of history, shaped by encounters between different civilisations, religions and cultures. Yet through their emirate’s directives and orders, such as the 2026 Criminal Procedure Regulations, and other legal mechanisms, the Taliban have taken my homeland into a valley of darkness.
Benafsha Yaqoobi, left, vividly remembers the fall of Kabul on 15 August, 2021. Last year, Taliban fighters celebrated the fourth anniversary of their takeover in Kabul, right (Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP)The Taliban now divides people into four social categories: ulema (Islamic scholars), elites – including merchants and tribal elders – the middle class and the lower class, with that status defining how they are treated by the system.
Formally placing Afghans into different classes is not merely a technical legal provision. It represents the kind of society the Taliban are constructing – one in which citizens do not stand as equals before the authorities but are assigned different status according to a hierarchy determined by the emirate.
This means punishment is based on your social status. Punishments for the uelma or the elite might constitute a warning; the middle class might be summoned to court and imprisoned; the lower class, meanwhile, could be more severely punished, by threats, beating, or flogging.
New regulations also divide us explicitly into the “free” and the “enslaved”, effectively legalising slavery, and granting enforcement to authority figures like religious figureheads or husbands, who hold sway over their wives and family.
No one has suffered more than women and girls. Girls have been deprived of education beyond primary school while women have been progressively excluded from public life altogether.
The Taliban that rules today is broadly the same as the rulership that ruled in the 1990s. There have been individuals within their ranks who appeared to take a more pragmatic view. Deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, for instance, publicly challenged the restrictions on girls’ education. But voices advocating even limited reform have struggled against the hardline centre of power in Kandahar.
What I feel is less surprise than regret. Regret for what has been lost. Regret for how little meaningful international action has followed all the statements of condemnation. Afghanistan has been falling off the radar. The UK continues to maintain diplomatic attention on the country, but most nations’ approaches are shaped by their own interests and the slippery language of “meaningful engagement”. Western nations lack the requisite will and determination. They lack the sense of moral commitment that would help Afghanistan regain its freedoms.
I do not see hope in international politics. If I find it anywhere, it is in Afghanistan’s young people, and particularly its women and girls.
I serve as a prosecutor in proceedings concerning violations of Afghan women’s rights before the independent international Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, which investigates human rights violations. Through that work, I have continued to hear directly from victims about the consequences of Taliban rule. But I have also seen the resistance of the Afghan people – and specifically, that of its women and girls – against tyrannical rule.
Young people fight back in whatever peaceful ways remain available to them – through social media, online platforms and other spaces where they can still make themselves heard. This generation still sees itself as citizens with rights and refuses to surrender that idea.
Afghanistan remains my home and I remain deeply connected to it. But Britain has also become home. It gave me a haven, a place of safety from which I could resume my life. Perhaps that is one of the strangest consequences of these five years – to build a life in freedom while remaining so closely connected to people still struggling for it. I have fixated on the liberty which has been taken from Afghanistan, while living in a country that considers liberty so ordinary.
The Afghanistan I left that August has changed profoundly, but its future has not yet been written. I, and women like me, intend to have a part in writing it.
Dr Benafsha Yaqoobi is a civic society and human rights activist, founder of the Organisation of Rahyab for Rehabilitation Services for the blind in Afghanistan and The Rahyab Initiative UK, a former attorney for the elimination of violence against women, and a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission before the Taliban’s 2021 takeover. Last year she was a prosecutor for Afghanistan’s case at the People’s Permanent Tribunal. She works to inform the international community of the critical importance of including Afghan women in national peace-building processes
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