The twenty years of American presence in Afghanistan, now decried, have made Afghan women a real political force. More numerous and more representative, they embody, today, the face of resistance to the Taliban yoke, more than the tired or inexperienced heirs of Commander Massoud (1953-2001), defeated in the Panchir valley. Thursday September 9, hundreds of them took to the streets of Kabul, but also in those of the provinces of Parwan and Badakhshan to denounce the composition of a Taliban government without woman and to defend their rights.
In Mazar-e Charif, the capital of the province of Balkh, on the border with Uzbekistan, several dozen women and men were also present, Thursday, around 9:30 a.m. in Darwaze-Jamhori square, in the east of the city’s majestic Blue Mosque. Under the large ceramic portrait of Commander Massoud, the best enemy of the Taliban, new masters of the city, the traffic was dense and the street vendors were preparing their stalls.
A group of a dozen young women, aged 20 to 30, began chanting slogans in the name of freedom to demand a government that includes women. Tense, they knew that the demonstrations had to be declared to the Ministry of the Interior in order to be authorized. The Taliban, quickly arrived there, formed a security cordon preventing other women from joining them, as well as young men who came to support them.
Death threat
The face-to-face lasted almost an hour. Deprived of their movement, the women multiplied the names of birds to the address of the Taliban soldiers, who seemed to have been instructed to hold back their blows after the disastrous effect of the images of repression of other demonstrations, in particular in Kabul, on world opinion. The more reckless women then grabbed their guns, shouting that without them they wouldn’t have the same confidence. The latter ended up calling all the nearby men suspected of filming the scene with their phones.
The rally was then dispersed by the Taliban. Amir, a street vendor of grapes, explains: “They didn’t abuse people. “ Across the street, Samir and his colleague, standing in front of the meat ready to cook on the skewers, wonder what happened to their third sidekick in the little street restaurant: “He was taken away while he was just looking at his phone, they thought he was filming, he has not yet been released from prison. “
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