Fariba Qauomi keeps the girls and women of Afghanistan in her thoughts while she’s out for walks and visits in parks near her Wolseley home in Winnipeg.
They’re freedoms girls and women in her home country no longer have under Taliban rule.
Qauomi, her husband and two children fled Afghanistan in 2022, a year after American troops left the country and the Taliban retook control.
Since August 2021, girls and women have been banned from many areas of public life, including going to schools beyond Grade 6 and universities.
Last week, the Taliban passed a morality law that formalized even more restrictions for both men and women.
The rules say women must cover their bodies and faces in front of male strangers. According to the 144-page, 35-article document seen by The Associated Press, women are not allowed to read aloud or sing in public.
The new law also bans men from shaving their beards and skipping prayer. Car drivers can’t play music, and images of living beings, such as photographs, can’t be published.
If broken, people could face penalties, including “warnings of divine punishment, verbal threats, confiscation of property, detention for one hour to three days in public jails, and any other punishment deemed appropriate,” the Taliban’s justice ministry said in a statement last week.
It’s the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws since the Taliban’s takeover and were approved by supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, last Wednesday.
Qauomi is among those the Afghan-Canadian community who fear the laws will further erase and silence women and escalate extremism in the region.
“It’s a very difficult situation for all people of Afghanistan,” Qauomi said Wednesday.
“Every time I hear about the new Taliban rule, I feel stressed and suffocated.”
Law stealing women’s hope, future
Qauomi and her family were living in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul when the American withdrawal happened.
Qauomi had long worked in the education and non-profit sectors as a facilitator and teacher focused on girls’ education, but she said that ended when the Taliban took control in August 2021.
The next month, girls were prevented from going to high schools, despite the Taliban initially vowing to respect girls’ and women’s rights.
Across the country, women in both private and public sectors were told to stay home from jobs, including female employees working for Kabul’s municipal government.
Qauomi lost her job. So did her husband. Their daughter no longer attended school, Qauomi said.
“It was like [being] a prisoner,” she said of her and her daughter’s situations at the time.
“She just cried. ‘What should I do? What will be my future?'”
The family attempted leaving Afghanistan once before successfully making it to Pakistan in 2022. They arrived in Winnipeg last November.
Since leaving their home country, girls and women have been banned from gyms and public parks.
A United Nations report published earlier this year said access to health care, public places and travel is limited for women who aren’t married or aren’t with a mahram (male guardian).
The few women who do work today are restricted to jobs such as cleaning, making food and tailoring.
Although Qauomi says she was expecting these changes, along with the Taliban’s recent morality law, it’s “painful” to hear, especially from family and friends.
Qauomi says she’s video called her brother and sister in Afghanistan, both of whom have daughters, since learning about the law. Their desperation is written all over their faces, she said.
“Everyone can see without asking anything, and all are very worried. All are disappointed without hoping for their future.”
The morality law also isn’t surprising to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, an organization that’s supported education for girls and women in the country since 1998.
The organization’s senior director, Murwarid Ziayee, fears the laws will isolate and silence girls and women and spike child marriages and suicide rates.
“It’s really concerning … how this restriction is impacting their mental health, and it’s just taking away any hopes in their lives,” Ziayee said Tuesday.
Ziayee recalls being reprimanded for not wearing a burqa in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the ’90s.
“It’s refreshed the same memory that I was going through, and it’s very devastating for me,” she told CBC News.
She says she’s worried what more restrictions may be coming, such as crackdowns on internet and social media use.
Ziayee also fears the laws will stoke extremism, exacerbated by poor education rates and health, along with poverty.
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, condemned the Taliban’s law last week, saying it was “another attempt to silence the people of Afghanistan.”
Ziayee says this condemnation isn’t enough.
She wants Canada and the international community to put political pressure on the Taliban in a unified way.
Ziayee criticized some countries, including the United Arab Emirates, which recently accepted a Taliban-appointed diplomat as an ambassador of Afghanistan.
“For international community and people outside Afghanistan, it’s just news. For Afghans inside the country, it’s their life, and that is something we want international community to feel it, to listen to it, to see it and to take action as [if] it’s something happening to them, and that’s a missing piece.”
Hope, resistance
Earlier this week, a Taliban spokesperson called on critics to acknowledge Islamic values and warned against “arrogance,” in response to concerns raised by the United Nations over the new law.
Despite fear and intimidation within Afghanistan, Ziayee says she hears stories of resistance from inside the country that bring her hope, from covert gatherings to online education.
“I just hope something happens from within the country, but it’s hard…. It’s very difficult,” Ziayee said.
Meanwhile, Qauomi’s family’s adjustment to Canadian life hasn’t been easy — from finding jobs to learning English — although the plight of girls and women in Afghanistan is much more difficult, Qauomi said.
“Right now, I’m happy that I have very best friends here, and they help us a lot, and the better thing is that my daughter is going to school, and she’s hoping for her future.”