By Tom Donkin
BBC 100 Women
Afghanistan’s women MPs fled for their lives when the Taliban took power – with only nine of 69 women MPs remaining, in hiding, in the country.
Now scattered across the globe, many want to continue fighting for women’s rights and aim to set up an Afghan “women’s parliament in exile”.
The largest group, numbering 22, are in Greece. There are also groups in Albania, Turkey and the US.
However one female former MP is preparing to return – she says little can be achieved from abroad and “we have to be inside Afghanistan”.
Mashid (not her real name) went into hiding immediately after the Taliban takeover, keeping permanently on the move. She never slept in the same house two nights in a row.
She didn’t want to risk taking her family to Kabul airport, where there were crowds, chaotic scenes and more than one explosion, so there was no easy way out of the country. “The doors of Afghanistan closed,” she says.
But two weeks ago, after three months underground, Mashid put on a burka, completely covering her face, and boarded a bus with her children. They headed first for Herat, and then for the Iranian border. “One thing about the Taliban, they don’t force women to reveal their covered face,” she says.
If she had been identified at a Taliban checkpoint, she would certainly have been detained, Mashid says. But officials would not expect an MP to wear a burka, she says, and “they think that all Afghan politicians and woman activists have been evacuated.”
After 10 days travelling through Iran, Mashid now finds herself in Turkey. But she doesn’t want to stay, because she’s concerned the Turkish authorities won’t allow her to remain politically active.
She wants to continue telling the world about the “horror” faced now by women and girls in Afghanistan, and campaigning for change. For now she is hiding her identity, to protect relatives who remain in Afghanistan.
The BBC has established that nine of the 69 women MPs remain in Afghanistan, in hiding.
Many of the others managed to get places on evacuation flights.
Some 46 are now in Europe and Turkey. The rest have taken refuge in a dozen countries from Australia to Qatar.
Source: bbc