The Current - Being a woman in Afghanistan

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Five years after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, one young woman says she feels like her home has become her jail. She once went to school and worked with a Canadian NGO, but now says she's afraid to leave her house, and hopes the Canadian government can help.

This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, attacks that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban. In the years that followed, Afghan women gained back key freedoms, the ability to go to school, work, and learn to drive. But five years ago, the Taliban retook power, stripping those rights away. The regime imposed its own strict interpretation of Islamic laws, and most women are once again confined to their homes with no access to school beyond grade six, and the fear for their own safety, even on simple trips to the market. The CBC's senior international correspondent Margaret Evans met one Afghan woman online

back in 2003. At the time, that woman was studying virtually through an American university, hopeful that she would be able to leave Afghanistan. Just a note, to protect the woman's identity, We will not be using her name. And one of our producers has actually voiced her comments to Margaret due to the risks that she and her family may face for speaking out against the Taliban. Margaret Evans, joins us now from London. Margaret, hello. Hi, Matt. Tell me about this young woman.

How did you come to meet her? Well, looking around for ways to cover what was happening to women in Afghanistan at the time because it wasn't so easy to get there. It's still not so easy to report there and once you get there. But basically I was looking at how women were coping. This was two years after the return of the Taliban. And I was specifically looking for women who were, you know, determined to keep studying. And this young woman was recommended and agreed, you know, taking some risks to let us send a camera to her home to talk to us. We, of course, protected her identity.

You couldn't even do that now in my latest conversations with her. Can't do that. You can do it only, you know, through video or on the telephone. But basically, you know, this is a young woman who was trying to improve her life. And you say we're not telling too much about her. I don't want to get into her age. But she's someone who's formed during those years between, you know, the before, you know, after the Taliban and now after the Taliban again, if you like. And, you know, her life has been snatched from her.

What was she doing in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power? That was a special period in the lives of women in that country. She very well educated, good English. She was exactly what, you know, countries like Canada were looking for in trying to help develop Afghanistan. And she was, she essentially was hired to work on a couple of aid programs that were funded by Global Affairs Canada. They were all about empowering women. That was, you know, part of Canada's foreign policy. focus at the time. Ultimately, unfortunately, they let her down. She was eligible to come to

Canada under a special measures program endorsed by Global Affairs Canada as being eligible. And I've seen the letters. And it was one of those horrible lost in the mail kind of, you know, bureaucratic block hole things that let her down. I'm going to come back to that in a moment. Tell us a bit more about how her life has changed since the Taliban swept back into power five years ago? You know, she's more privileged than many women in Afghanistan today, and she would acknowledge that, and that her family has enough money to afford the Internet.

So she has a small window on the outside world. She can keep trying to study, and, you know, that's how I talk to her. But ultimately, she is like every other woman in Afghanistan, her life has been stamped with somebody else's vision of how it should be. She's seen her past accomplishments, you know, made meaningless in the blink of an eye. And, you know, a recent UN report found that half of all Afghan women that they spoke to were leaving their homes only one or two times in a month. As she says, it's like being in jail. Have a listen.

The day that they have arrived, their restrictions have been more and more. It never decreased, but it increased day by day. It started with a ban on schools, then to... going to markets, going to travel ban, then jobs, universities, and now like you have to get the permission to breathe even. How do you feel if you live in a place with zero rights? If you're not busy and think about what is happening outside of your home, it gives you trauma. Believe me, it feels like jail. For outsiders who cannot feel this pain, I can give the example of COVID-19. How did they feel during COVID-19? For them, maybe one year was staying in

their homes, but for us it is about five years. We are in our houses. We never go out. We just go out when it is really necessary for a person who have worked, who had a lot of dreams. It is so much difficult now. What are the rules you mentioned that this UN report finds that women are leaving the house one or two times a month? What are the rules in place right now when it comes to women's rights in Afghanistan? The Taliban has issued more than a hundred decrees dealing just with women. They can't be outside without a male guardian. They're not allowed to go to a park.

They're not allowed to go to playgrounds, even with their children. They have closed down all hair and beauty salons. They are not even allowed to raise their voices in public. And inside, they're not supposed to sing. They're not supposed to read out loud. They have no power within a marriage. There's no question of equality before the law. If there's violence in a marriage beatings, they are only criminalized if the physical injuries are severe and visible.

And given that women have to cover up completely, when will we, they be visible. Child marriage is basically accepted. And on top of that, you have to remember that there are also decrees that threaten businesses, individuals who deal with any women breaking the rules. So there's pressure on society to enforce those restrictions as well. And so given that umbrella that she lives under, how is this woman doing now? Well, she told me when I first interviewed her in 2023, that she was sleeping a lot. You know, it was a sign of depression, but I think it was also a coping mechanism because she didn't have to think. And I think that, you know, most Afghans feel they've been forgotten by the West, that horrible, chaotic exit and sort of, you know, being taught to hope.

I think her pain is kind of double because she feels like Canada forgot her to and went back on its word. And she says she's living in a country where, you know, barnyard animals are respected more than women. I sometimes feel that it is a mistake to be a woman in Afghanistan. and even to my fiancé, I'm sometimes saying that what if this was a boy? I could do those things, these things. If you feel the limitations and restrictions on you, it's really hard to believe when you explain it to someone else. Some outsiders, they even can't believe how we are living here,

like you're living at a home, so there are zombies outside. This is the same feeling for Afghan women. If we go outside, there are so many people that can attack us. They can arrest us with just not wearing a proper hijab. This is really hard. This woman is engaged now, is that right? Yeah, I was really surprised by that because obviously it's going to limit her freedom on some level. She's going to have to have a lot of trust in her husband because he's going to ultimately,

he and the men and her family have the ultimate power over her. Extraordinary control. Yeah. But she said, you know, she lives with elderly parents and a sister, and her father is not well enough to act as a guardian or a mahram, as they call it. So she can't leave without, you know, a man. And she said she feels more secure with a man who can be with her. Because if you have the right one, I guess, you know, it can be a form of protection

and allow her slightly more freedom in society. I really needed someone to be by my side, a man. No matter how strong you are, being a girl here, you feel that you're not strong enough when the outside world is cruel to you. And they do not accept your existence. They might even respect an animal rather than women. When you have this feeling of being so much restricted and disrespected, you get this feeling of at least having a man by your side, so you at least can go somewhere and you have at least someone to depend on. You had said earlier, Margaret, that she had felt and she had been let down by Global Affairs Canada, that there was some sort of relationship between her and the Canadian government and that that had been ruptured.

What is the state of that relationship now with the Canadian government? Well, essentially state ruptured, I don't know that they would describe it that way, but basically, when, you know, U.S.-led forces left Afghanistan in that panic, Western governments were trying to deal with the people who had helped them whilst in the country. We know it more in Canada, I'd say, by, you know, former members of the Canadian Armed Forces trying to get, you know, look after their interpreters and people who'd risked their lives in that way. Well, civil society was also included in this program, a special immigration measures program, in which you had to prove an enduring relationship with Canada. I mean, I have one of the letters written on her behalf in 2021 in front of me. It says, you know, from somebody from Global Affairs Canada, won't name them, can't name them, saying, I can personally confirm that due to your involvement in said programs, funded by Canada, that GAC has already deemed your application eligible as a person. who has an enduring relationship with Canada, and your information has been submitted to immigration, refugees, and citizenship Canada.

Now, that should have opened the doors for her to have an invitation to apply. But basically, from what I've been able to determine, you know, at that time, basically the system was overwhelmed because they opened it up to other streams as well, noble intentions perhaps, but a collapse of the system and people like the woman were talking about and many others, There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of hundreds, if not thousands of applications that might have gone missing, you know, left to their own devices and unable to talk to anybody about it. So they're already living in this dystopian world, but there's this blankness. I have worked with so much commitment with the government of Canada, but I was left behind.

I had the dream of the government of Canada would have helped me, not because I'm claiming something, but because I really worked with so much commitment with my whole heart. The thing was they have kept me waiting for so long. And so what have you heard from the Canadian government about this? Pretty much the same as I heard a couple of years ago. Not much. They won't comment on individual cases. The global affairs refers your questions to refugees, citizenship, Canada, back and forth. Basically, you know, the same message is a very kind of catch-22.

You need to have the endorsement from global affairs. but if they don't, if somehow that that endorsement doesn't get to IRCC, you're not going to get an invitation or, you know, we've received your application, but because we don't have your endorsement, your application has been canceled. A lot of people talked about replying over and over again. She's still hopeful. What are her hopes for the future? Does she think that she'll be able to get here to Canada at some point in time?

I think that's her hope. I'd say she's very practical and she's also trying to accommodate to the best of her ability, her life now, maybe this decision to get married. But she did write over the summer to Prime Minister Carney. She had written to Justin Trudeau during the past government as well, but she wrote a powerful letter restating her case, sending him all her documentation, and basically saying, you know, please don't let my story end in silence. That's a quote.

and it's a personal letter, but it's also a hope for all Afghan women that they won't be forgotten. Maybe not physically, but mentally, internally, we are dying every day. We are dying every second. We are dying every minute. What if a man is a woman for one day and they live in Afghanistan? They will understand what I'm saying. I love my country. I deeply love my country. But when you are living in a country that is like a jail and the people outside are like zombies, you cannot live in that kind of country.

We are dying every second. Margaret, this is quite a story. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for helping me tell it, Matt. Margaret Evans is the CBC's Senior International correspondent. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC. c.ca slash podcasts.