Almost three years have passed under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. During this time, women have borne the greatest burden. Alongside the ban on women’s education, work, and social activities, the Taliban have arbitrarily detained and imprisoned many women and girls on various charges from different areas of Kabul and other provinces.
This report features an interview with a girl who was arrested on charges of engaging in extramarital relationships and transferred to Kabul province’s detention center from the Pul-e Surkh area of Kabul. This girl recounts the bitter and horrifying experience of physical and psychological torture, suicide, forced marriages, the exploitation of girls as sexual slaves, the neglect of the basic needs of female prisoners, and the constant hunger endured by women in Taliban prisons. Pseudonyms are used in this narrative to preserve the interviewee’s identity.
What befell Farida and the other female prisoners in the Taliban prison?
Farida, one of the students, was arrested by the Taliban upon returning home from the Pul-e Surkh area of Kabul and was detained in Kabul province’s detention center. She describes how she was arrested and her experience of imprisonment, along with two other female prisoners as follows:
“One morning around 9:00, I was heading towards the Directorate of Education in the Sara-e Ghazni area in Kabul to take care of my brother’s paperwork for transferring to another school. I finished my work there and left. Then I started going towards the Pul-e Surkh crossroads. It was around 11:00 AM. I got into a taxi that was going directly to the Dasht-e Barchi region. Two other girls got in as well. Two boys got in the front seat of the taxi, and with us all, the passengers of the taxi got complete. While the taxi was about to move, a group of Taliban moral police arrived and forced us all off the taxi with their guns. They forcefully, and by using physical abuse lifted all of us into their vehicle. I asked, ‘What have we done wrong? What is our crime?’ They said, ‘Shut up, or we’ll shoot all of you right here.’ They took us to their police station. Each one of them was coming to us and made derogatory remarks and accusations. They said you Hazara people are all corrupted. I became very confrontational and insisted on knowing why they brought us to this police station and why they brought me here. One of the senior Taliban clerics said that you are all sinners, and a report had come about you to us that you people are running a brothel. When they took us into a room, there were almost 10 other girls there. They were also being accused of being prostitutes. Seeing them shocked me, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I raised my voice to the Taliban and asked them where and with which man they saw me. Why do you make false accusations to us? I said, ‘Come and prove that we are ‘adulterers.’ One of the senior Taliban, in anger, said, ‘Shut up, you Hazara girl. You dare to question us?’ It became evening, and they said we would spend the night in their police station. They collected everyone’s mobile phones. No one at home knew where I was. The girls were all shocked and couldn’t speak.”
In the women’s section, there were also two female shift workers. I cried and pleaded with both of them to let me use their mobile phone for just a minute to call my family, or else they would worry. One of the women felt sorry for me and handed over her phone, telling me to hurry and make a discreet call. I called home and informed them that the Taliban had brought me to their police station. My mother and other family members rushed to come to the station, but it was too late at night. I told them not to come now, they won’t let you in, come in the morning. I was very scared and trembling. I begged the same woman who gave me the phone and said, “Dear sister, by the same God you know, I swear I am innocent, please keep an eye on me tonight so that these Taliban fighters don’t do anything to me.” The poor woman sat awake by my side all night. When she heard the footsteps of the Taliban, she would get up from her place and stand at the door so that the Taliban wouldn’t suspect anything.
Finally, morning came, and I had no blood left in my veins from sheer terror. Early in the morning, they transferred all of us to the Taliban’s 40th Intelligence Directorate. There, they interrogated all the girls, accused each one of committing crimes, and transferred them to the province’s detention center. They fabricated a case against me too, claiming I was an “adulteress.” They forcefully took my fingerprints. At first, I resisted, but one of them came forward and beat me with his gun, saying he would forcibly take my fingerprint. My family members had come, but they didn’t allow any of them to see me.
The Taliban took me from the 40th Directorate to the provincial detention center. When I entered the provincial detention center, I was very shocked. I couldn’t breathe. There were many young girls and women there, numbering around 100, from Hazara, Tajik, and later I realized, from Sayed and Uzbek ethnicities as well. I asked everyone, none of them knew the reason for their arrest, except for a few who said they were brought here on charges of adultery, escaping from home, murder, and theft. There were even 12 and 14-year-old girls who said they were brought here on charges of adultery, which nobody could believe. Some of the girls were so shocked and traumatized that they were speechless. When I heard the girls’ stories, I vowed to myself that I would kill myself before the Taliban could harm me.
The prison was very cold, and we all slept on the cold ground at night, and the air became very cold from the night. They only gave us enough bread so that no one would die. Everyone drank water from a rusty tap. They also washed their food utensils in the same tap. There, they also had female shift workers who, under Taliban orders, came every night and tortured the girls and women with lashes and beatings according to their crimes. Sometimes Taliban Mawlawis came and beat the girls with lashes and punches. Witnessing the scene of women being tortured and hearing their cries and wails was more excruciating than anything else. Several nights and days passed there like years for me, and out of fear, I couldn’t sleep at all.
In the cell where I was imprisoned, there were girls whose families had no idea about their whereabouts. Some had been in detention for months, even up to a year. They said their families, ashamed by society, had disowned them, and left them under the physical, psychological, and sexual torture of the Taliban. The Taliban took advantage of this situation and forced some of them into their marriages. Those same girls were busy doing the Taliban’s chores in prison, becoming sexual slaves to them. There were also girls who, after much resistance, gave in, agreeing to marry Taliban members just to escape prison.
The Taliban make the space in the prison and detention center so confined for the girls that they are forced to comply with their demands. Yet, some girls refused to obey the Taliban and resorted to suicide. Just a few days before I was transferred to the provincial detention center, four young girls electrocuted themselves in the bathhouse there due to the severity of the abuse and torture by the Taliban. On the first few days of my transfer, two girls from Paktia province also intended to commit suicide, but we all intervened.
During the time I was there, they brought in many girls. Some were also transferred to the Pul-e-Charkhi prison. One day, they brought a girl whose clothes were completely torn and she was in a terrible condition, to the extent that you couldn’t even see her face. I don’t know what tragedy had befallen that poor girl that she couldn’t even speak. During the 17 days of interrogation, they tried to make me confess to a crime I hadn’t committed. Finally, I asked to be sent to a forensic doctor to examine whether I had committed adultery or not. They reluctantly agreed to take me to one of the female doctors, who also treated me very badly. After the examination, it became clear that they had falsely accused me, but still, they didn’t release me until my lawyer offered money to the high-ranking Mawlawis of the prison. They released me from prison in exchange for 100,000 Afghanis. My family, who didn’t have the money, had to sell our house to set me free. Finally, after 17 long days, I was free.
When I was released, they brought a sheet of paper to sign. I said I wouldn’t sign without reading it. One of the Taliban came close and said, “Who gives you the time to read?” They forcibly took my signature and then set me free.
Murder; Shabnam’s Only Way to Escape Taliban Fighters’ Torture and Repeated Sexual Assault
Farida, having spent some time in Taliban captivity, recounts the bitter experiences and reasons for the imprisonment of other women. She tells the story of a girl forced into a forced marriage with one of the Taliban fighters in Kabul, who, after torture, mistreatment, and repeated sexual assault, is compelled to murder him, saying:
“About seven days into my captivity, one day the Taliban brought a young girl to the prison. The marks of torture were visible on her hands, feet, and neck. After a while, I became close to her and asked her the reason for her imprisonment. She said, ‘One of the Taliban, I don’t know where he had seen me, but he found our house. One day he came to our house and demanded me from my father and mother. A man of about forty or forty-five years old. My mother said our daughter is underage and only fourteen years old, we won’t give our daughter to you because you’re old enough to be her father. But he rejected my parents’ words and threatened us that if they didn’t give me to him, he would either capture and flee me or bring bloodshed to our home. He forced my parents and they gave me to him. When he took me to his house, he had three other wives, two of them were in Kabul and one in the province. I endured six months with him. During that time, he always tortured and beat me. When he wanted to have intercourse with me, I felt disgusted by him and resisted. He would get angry and beat me with his fists and feet, suffocating me. Then he satisfied his sexual needs. I couldn’t endure all that torture anymore. One night when he came home, he didn’t go to the other house where his other wife was, but came to my room. When it was night, the children and his wife were in the other house, and he came as usual to sexually assault me. As usual, I resisted at first, and he subdued me by choking and beating me and then sexually assaulting me, then he fell asleep. When it was midnight and everyone was asleep, I took his gun, which was always in the house and loaded, and emptied it into his head as much as it had bullets. When I did that, I felt relieved and thought to myself, it’s good that I got rid of him. I saw with my own eyes that his brain was out of his head and even scattered on the wall. After that incident, I wasn’t conscious for a long time and was shocked. I came to myself when they brought me to prison.'”
Due to the torture inflicted by her husband, She couldn’t sleep at night and was plagued by nightmares. Whenever she lost consciousness, the Taliban would arrive, accusing her of mischief and subjecting her to beatings with their fists and sticks until she regained consciousness. One day, I asked why she was shaking every night. She replied, “When I close my eyes, I see the nightmare that the same man is suffocating me with his hands, and sometimes I see the scene of his murder before my eyes.” Every night, that girl endured torture in the prison.
Sahar and her nine-month-old child were subjected to torture on charges of engaging in extramarital relations
From the early days of their rule, the Taliban arbitrarily detained women and girls on various charges. During my time in prison, they brought in women and girls every day on various charges. They even imprisoned a woman just because she had visited the prison several times. One woman, along with her friend and her three-month-old child, spent six months in prison and the Taliban did not allow any of her family members to visit her. The Taliban had arrested her and her friend along with her three-month-old child from one of the streets of Kabul. She explained the reason for her imprisonment as follows: “One day, my friend called and suggested that we go to the city tomorrow and visit one of the mullahs along the way. Bring your child with you, and I have some issues to share with him too. The next day, we coordinated and went to the house of one of the mullahs, whose address I had received from one of my friends. When we entered the house, something seemed suspicious. The house was not normal and it was empty inside. I got scared and told my friend that we should leave this place. We left the house. We had reached two streets further when suddenly the Taliban arrived and took both of us. They asked who was in that house and why we left that house. We were shocked and didn’t know what the Taliban were saying. We both tried hard to escape from the Taliban’s clutches, but they beat us and took us to their police station. We stayed in their station for two nights. They told us that in the house you went to, after you, we arrested eight other men, and you had committed adultery with those eight men, even though there was no one there. No matter how much we swore that we didn’t do this, and the child was in my arms, they didn’t believe us. After two days, they brought us to the provincial detention center. My child was three months old at that time, and now she is nine months old.”
The husband of that woman and her friend’s fiancé also came to prison during that time and tried to see their women and set them free, but the Taliban wouldn’t allow it and had made strong cases against both of them. They couldn’t sleep at night and cried bitterly, saying they hadn’t done anything wrong. They said, “At least prove that we committed adultery. They grabbed us from the street and brought us to prison, claiming that you have engaged in immoral acts with eight men while it is false.”
Their families repeatedly asked the Taliban to bring those same eight men who were caught with the two of them together to clarify the matter, but the Taliban replied that it wasn’t relevant to them. They said, “We have arrested you, and that’s the end of the story.” In that prison, everyone had their own story, and many didn’t have proven crimes. Many were arbitrarily detained without any trial and were tortured in Taliban prisons.
