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As Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, a 24-year-old woman in Kabul tells of seeing the ‘fearful faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women’ all around her.
The anonymous university student wrote in the Guardian: “As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started. I felt like I can no longer laugh out loud, I can no longer listen to my favourite songs, I can no longer meet my friends in our favourite cafe, I can no longer wear my favourite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to my job or finish the university degree that I worked for years to achieve.”
Afghan women fear that the freedoms won since 2001 will now be crushed. “I did not expect that we would be deprived of all our basic rights again and travel back to 20 years ago. That after 20 years of fighting for our rights and freedom, we should be hunting for burqas and hiding our identity,” she wrote.
When the student heard the Taliban had reached Kabul, she “felt I was going to be a slave. They can play with my life any way they want.”
© Guardian