My story begins in the calm days before the fall of the Republic and leads into the dark nights filled with fear, torture, and steadfastness. My journey is part of the truth I have seen with my own eyes and experienced with my heart and soul. This is the voice of resistance and hope against the oppression Afghan women have been fighting for years. I am Wasima Kohistani, 24 years old, from Kapisa province. Before the fall of the Republic, I lived with my family—my mother and my sister. I was a university student, dreaming of graduating and sitting for the judicial exam, but unfortunately, I never reached that day.
I only went to university and studied. The Taliban’s accusation that I was a judge, that I investigated their members, or that I worked for the Republic is not true. It was only a false charge they used to trap me for raising my voice and speaking out for justice.
As a young girl, when you finish twelve years of school and then go to university, you naturally dream of achieving your goals one day. I wanted to become a very good judge, but the Taliban never let me achieve that dream. Before the fall, we had a peaceful family life. Life was normal and pleasant. Now, there is no peace, no comfort. Material wealth doesn’t matter—people still have money to some extent—but that sense of freedom and a normal life is gone. In Afghanistan, freedom gives you a different feeling entirely.
On the day Kabul fell, I was in the capital. When the Taliban entered Kapisa, we went to Kabul, and the day they reached Kabul, one of my family members, who was in the military—was martyred by the Taliban in Maidan Wardak. We were taking his body back to Kapisa. For someone whose brother has been killed by the Taliban, it is unbearably painful. When the Taliban arrived in Kabul, I saw my mother crying. I said, “Mother, they are here now.” She replied, “What hurts me is that I lost my young son defending the country, but today they came anyway. I sacrificed my children so they would never come, yet here they are.” It was a deeply painful feeling. I don’t remember the Taliban’s previous rule because I was a child, but this time, when the national flag of the country fell, it felt like the sky had collapsed to the ground.
When the Taliban came, everyone fled—especially men who had served in the government. We stayed and saw the situation for ourselves. The moment a woman’s freedom is taken away, it is already a danger. When you can no longer leave home, go to university, or study, that’s a shadow of danger over your whole life.
On November 10, 2021, a young woman from my province came to our home in a terrible condition—beaten, bloodied—after being raped by the Taliban in Kabul’s 11th police district. That very moment, I gave her my clothes to cover herself, filmed her, and sent the video to journalist Muslim Shirzad. It was the first time I had ever sent him a video. I had never done anything like that before—not even gone out with other girls in public. But when the video was published, it caused an uproar. The Taliban came and arrested the girl. She pointed directly to our house, and her mother said, “Wasima encouraged us.” They claimed I was a member of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan—when in fact, I wasn’t part of the Resistance, nor had I ever held a position in the Republic.
The Taliban arrested me. Until they proved my “crime” in the 11th district, their behavior was tolerable. But after that, they treated me as if I had been behind every suicide bombing and explosion of the past 20 years. That’s when the torture began. I was beaten and suffered greatly. After I spoke to the media again, I was released—but with constant fear. Every time someone knocked on our door, we thought it might be the Taliban.
Eventually, I was forced to leave my country. I took refuge in a safe house in Kabul. A girl named Atiya Mehraban contacted me and said, “We want to move you to a safe house.” At that time, no one dared shelter anyone—not even families. Two days later, the Taliban raided the safe house because protesting women there had burned their burqas. I was unlucky enough to be caught with them.
They imprisoned me again with those girls, believing I had worked with them. No matter how much I cried or explained, no one listened. I spent another fourteen days in Taliban prison. After my release, on September 1, 2022, I left Afghanistan for Pakistan, and from there, I eventually reached the United States.
In Taliban prisons, they never treated women well. Just as they flog women publicly, they also flog and beat them in secret. I was tortured badly, but the most painful scene for me was seeing women beaten in front of their children. The children cried and screamed, “Don’t take my mother,” yet the Taliban flogged their mothers right there in front of them.
One detained girl told me, “Wasima, the Taliban tore my collar to see if I had tattoos.” They ripped her clothes just to look at her body.
Leaving Afghanistan was a very hard decision. I was never afraid of Taliban bullets or lashes—may God grant me an honorable death. My fear was that the Taliban might take me and keep me, because they are that shameless. Even during my two imprisonments, I wasn’t afraid of being beaten or killed. When you step into the fight, you know it comes with death and prison. When a soldier goes to the battlefield, he knows he may not return alive. When you pick up a weapon, you know the other side has one too. When I joined the struggle, I knew all of this.
As I was leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan, the Taliban recognized me at the border. There was a clash, and they tried to shoot me—but accidentally shot a Pakistani soldier instead. The border closed for four days. I barely escaped. In Pakistan, some girls whose families worked with the Taliban—and who had once been in prison like me—accused me of betraying them to the Taliban. They threw me out of the guesthouse. I was outside until midnight, until finally, in the middle of the night, the organization helping us escape intervened and found me another place. I spent five months there under house arrest, not even allowed to step into the hallway. Many of the women today who claim to be “women’s rights activists” are, in reality, daughters of the Taliban.
My message is that the people of Afghanistan must unite. A few poor women shouting in the streets and appearing in the media are still insulted as “project-takers.” Instead of insulting these women, let’s insult the Taliban and rise up against them. The struggle is not the fight of one person. The Taliban are the enemy of all Afghans—they are the enemy of education, of religion, of both women and men in this land.
In the end, I believe every citizen of the country must rise against the Taliban. I am ready to be martyred for my people, for defending them. It gives me a good feeling when I work for the freedom of the women of my homeland.
