00:00to understand in a better manner what sort of struggles and challenges women deal with while
00:26they live in afghanistan under taliban regime i have a very special guest with me her name is
00:32mina sharif she is an afghan canadian author producer and an advocate for women's rights
00:38in afghanistan she was raised in canada as part of the afghan diaspora and then in 2005 she moved
00:46to kabul and she lived there for a very long time of 14 years until 2019 thank you so much for
00:53speaking on such an important issue which we all must talk about and continue to talk about as an
01:00international community because women in afghanistan are really suffering and suffocating under the
01:05taliban regime you went to kabul in 2005 you lived there for such a long time how was your experience
01:12at that time and how it is in contrast to now what you hear coming out of afghanistan from your
01:19friends or maybe from people you are in touch with um i would like to thank you um not only for having
01:26me but for addressing this topic i'd like to start by really reminding everyone that when women's
01:32rights are infractured it's not only an afghanistan issue it really affects women all over the world
01:37because when it's allowed in one place that kind of um struggle carries out into the rest of the world
01:44when we offer the permission for women to be treated this way it really opens the door for a lot of
01:51patriarchal and inhumane treatment of women around the world when i first arrived in afghanistan it was
01:58very soon after the first round of taliban and initially in my earlier year uh years um there was a lot
02:06of hesitation from women and to participate in society to really be out i mean they were coming from
02:13uh years of um really intense suffering and what i noticed was in a very short time it took so
02:24little time so much movement happened so fast we would have women so actively participating that you
02:31could from one day hardly seeing them in public spaces in society to really seeing them at almost a
02:3850 50 50 in every sector um not necessarily by job position but by representation they were
02:45they were really taking um leadership roles and actively contributing to society what i see and
02:53hear now is not a loss of that drive to be part of society but the loss of the opportunity not only to
03:00do it but to even dream about doing it and that is continuously cut off further by the decrees that keep
03:06piling up on them right um you know one of the dictates which taliban gave very recently was
03:14the ban on women authored books i mean that's obviously their goal is isolation erasure lack
03:22of opportunity and really crippling the women of afghanistan um because it's not only afghan uh sorry
03:28afghan women authors or women authors in general that they can't read from it's the subject matter that
03:34they're that they're isolating as well um there's a ban on gender and development as a subject there's
03:40a ban on women in sociology as a subject uh they're not allowed to learn about human rights that's
03:45literally been said that they're not allowed to learn about it and i think their hope is that with
03:49time and the continued ignoring from the rest of the world they can isolate um women to the extent that
03:56they're no longer demanding those rights because they don't know to um i think that's the ultimate goal
04:02um however the past has shown us that their powers did not work over women in afghanistan women even in
04:09their last reign of power continued to learn had secret schools continued to pass down lessons
04:15continued to teach literacy wrote poetry wrote stories i don't think that they have the control over afghan
04:21women that they dream of having and i don't think they ever fully will you also recently wrote a book
04:26which is titled your war our lives what is this book about what do you address how it can be of help
04:34for people around the world to understand better what women in afghanistan go through um sure i mean
04:41it's a fiction collection so it's really not like uh meant to be like a textbook or fact base there's so
04:49many books out there that can kind of um enlighten people on the history of afghanistan how we got here how
04:56women are treated um my book was meant to offer a glimpse into what daily life really looked like
05:02for people especially in the era that i was there it's it's um it's set in that time and to see the
05:08kind of growth and the kind of hopes and dreams and strengths of the afghan population while war is
05:14still present while fear is still present while limitations are still present because they were they
05:19were all the the difficulties were present in that glory period as well so that's what the book
05:26focuses on and um within that book is also the reality that taliban made this difficult taliban made
05:33people um fear re-entering society because of the the threat of violence and the continued violence
05:41that they inflicted on the exact population that they claim to understand so well now but these
05:48fictional stories that you've written the stories in your book it must have some sort of uh understanding and
05:55you hearing firsthand accounts of people who are living in afghanistan yeah sure i mean this was
06:00what i was the community i was i was a part of so while it's not from my point of view i'm sharing
06:07stories like a young woman who has her own television show something that just a few years before that era
06:15it was impossible to dream about kind of like right now as asking a young woman right now to dream about
06:21having her own television show would be outside of her realm of imagination possibly because you're
06:26not even allowing her to read a book however they kept their dreams alive in those in those times and
06:32then they reached those goals so quickly and that's what gives me hope that this era too is a pause and
06:39not a complete end to anything in the book i follow um their successes but also want to illustrate that it
06:47has never been fully easy just because the opportunities arose it still came with combating
06:54mindsets and combating security threats and combating all kinds of things and i kind of wanted
07:00to show the nuance in that yes we're we are hard like hard-working women resilient women um and not
07:07just women children men resilient people but the challenges are always there while the strength is
07:16evident at all times as well so the stories are anecdotal that you'll you'll hear about her
07:21you'll hear about a young boy who lives in an orphanage you'll read about um a woman who was a cleaning
07:26lady for um foreign visitors i want really people to see that while this uh 20 years of international
07:36presence in afghanistan was happening they were failing to ask about the people themselves so this is what
07:42the stories are focused on what their life looked like i was reading a story very recently where
07:49it was talking about how yes of course there are not opportunities in education healthcare work you
07:54can't go to an office and work there but there are opportunities where women can take up work from home
08:00they can do some handicraft work and there was a lot of exaggeration how they are still getting
08:06opportunities do you think this is hypocritical of the international community to be talking about
08:12opportunities in afghanistan but not truly giving them what they desire for yeah i mean offering the
08:17option of handicrafts to somebody who wanted to be a doctor is highly insulting and it's very
08:23whitewashing of the um of the infringement of human rights that's going on in afghanistan
08:28um it's the biggest disappointment i think the afghan population has had the taliban is just being the
08:34taliban they're being who they've always been it's the world that's really disappointed the
08:38population because not only should they be doing better for 20 years they claimed they were there
08:45to support the women they were there to support the population but that all just disappeared overnight
08:50but now when you talk to people living there them they must be you know adapting to the situation
08:56because they can't really do much they can't flee because the neighboring nations are no good
09:01so what do they then do i mean how do they cope with the situation i don't think adapting is really
09:08possible just because there's no end in sight they don't know what one day will bring a new um limitation
09:15and another limitation and they really don't know what's left to be taken away but they know that the
09:20taliban continues to find new ways to limit their opportunities um so they live in the fear of what is next of
09:28course um and the emotions really range from people i speak to obviously because different
09:33people react in different ways but uh anger is consistent the ones who find the energy are angry
09:39there are still people protesting even to this day which is mind-blowing to know that you've been
09:44ignored for four years and to continue demanding and risking your life knowing no one is coming to
09:49help you is just um i think uh such a symbol of of their insistence for human rights for themselves um
09:58but also many are depressed also many are extremely tired and it can be very hard to continue keeping
10:04yourself busy in the hopes that things will change i think that's what they're they're forced to do i
10:10often ask this question to people when i talk about afghanistan what is it that we can do to resolve it
10:17because seems like people talk about it but there's not much happening a lot of countries say we don't
10:23want to legitimize taliban which some say quote unquote a terrorist group um then what is it that we can
10:31do there is no arrest there is no diplomatic pressure there are no sanctions uh which is so big so that
10:38taliban can act right i mean there's two ways to look at it it's what can we do to stop the taliban
10:47but i always look at it as what can we do to stop supporting the taliban right they they are not they
10:53are not in power all by themselves unfortunately even countries like india are interacting with their
10:58leadership um taking them in the direction of legitimacy although they haven't recognized them as
11:04an official government they're leading they're meeting with their leaderships uh just in january
11:08in dubai for example having conversations with their ministers talking about trade in taliban is
11:14quite happy and um recognizing india as a trade partner when you speak out against your own government
11:21for the uplifting of taliban i think that's the strongest move versus anything else because it's when we
11:27stop giving them the power that we can talk about solutions on uh alternatives but we can't just
11:34talk about how do we get rid of them while still uplifting them while watching our governments from
11:40the west and from everywhere else continue to just not only look the other way but start to
11:47explore opportunities to work with them that just makes them stronger but i think ultimately i mean
11:52definitely it's very important for governments to put pressure on taliban but it's also about
11:57the people of afghanistan who are living there because ultimately if even if you're carrying out
12:01trade uh it is somehow helping the economy of afghanistan and it will ultimately lift the people of
12:08afghanistan you know what do you think because often when i talk to uh people who are activists for
12:15the rights of people in afghanistan they talk about how resilient are the people over there of course
12:20you talked about various emotions that they deal with anger sadness depression but they are also very
12:26resilient resilient but they're not i think i'm i think as afghans we're very tired of being called
12:31resilient all they're doing is not dying they don't want to be resilient they want they want rights they
12:37want prosperity they want to be able to i mean and there's two conversations i agree with you that trade
12:44helps economy of afghanistan to an extent but there's separate conversations today we're talking about women
12:50when you do that trade you are whitewashing what this government is doing with the women and it has
12:56to be all one package unfortunately when we see a government um conducting this kind of violation
13:02we have to say although we want this with you it has to be on the condition that you do not violate
13:09human rights this way so i think if we could demand our governments to do that that is kind of a win-win
13:16right um but i don't think that resilience is something we want to be proud of we want to say
13:21hey we deserve rights like everybody else please stand with us demand it for us and also it will
13:28carry out into the rest of the world i think in particularly the west is ignoring it as as if it's
13:33never going to get over here and it's never going to reach europe and it's never going and it will
13:38and that's the scariest part i think is that people are uh uh i think uplifting the behavior as well
13:45the countries around the world uh we have a really bad habit uh to forget about things when
13:52kabul fell it was very hot topic a lot of people are you know putting out statements condemning
13:58taliban but now people don't seem to care about afghanistan and i think
14:02our international bodies need to do more about it thank you thank you likewise and thank you again
14:07for keeping the voice of afghan women alive i appreciate that
14:15thank you
14:32so
