Sonia Asaqzada

I dream of a world of peace. A world without violence against women, without crime, and without rape. This is what I was working towards for many years. And I still do. I work as a volunteer for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). I hope that soon I will also be able to work professionally, fighting for a more peaceful world. 

I have been working since I was 16. I was also working on the morning of August 15, 2021, at my desk. My colleague came running into the office: “Can you hear that?” she called. I listened. “Nara-e-Takbir”, first quietly then louder and louder. “Nara-e-Takbir” – “God is big”. It is the battle cry of the Taliban, which they chant after victorious attacks. They had taken Kabul and we had lost everything that we have been fighting for in recent years. 

I was scared. Scared for me, for the people we would no longer be able to help, and for my family.

For 13 years I had been fighting for the rights of women, for the rights of girls to go to school, and for children in youth detention centres who were being trained to become suicide attackers. My husband had worked eight years for USAID, the agency of the US government responsible for administering development aid.  

In the following weeks I received fake emails and telephone calls. They offered me a chance to leave or a good job. All I had to do was turn up at a specific time at a specific place. Each of them was a trap. Of course I did not go. 

But the Taliban came to me. Twice they searched our building. We were lucky: they did not find the hidden certificates and work documents. But I became ill. I could not sleep and I could not eat. My colleagues from medica mondiale organised psychosocial support. And they searched for ways to get us out of Afghanistan. 

To leave via one of the neighbouring countries, we would need valid passports. I had already applied for new passports before the Taliban entered Kabul. But the Taliban were quicker than the passport authority.

When they opened again the queues were so long, we had no choice other than to pay 1,000 dollars to “buy” an appointment. We queued up at 3 o’clock in the morning. I was in the queue for women with our two boys aged five and six, and my husband was in the queue for men. The Taliban would use cable to hit the people waiting if they became too noisy. We had to wait for 12 hours.  

After a week the children and I received passports. But for my husband we had to pay another 500 dollars. Then, with these passports we could apply for visas for Pakistan by paying a fee of 1500 dollars. And again it was only the children and I who received them.  

Fresh hope came: in November we would be able to leave via Doha. But then the flight was cancelled on the evening before. The next attempt was in December: leaving via Iran. But the person who was getting us a visa was imprisoned by the Taliban. When the New Year came, I was in despair. 

Three weeks later, on the morning of January 19, an email arrived from medica mondiale: we needed to get to the German embassy in Tehran in three days. We thought this was a joke at first. How could that be possible? Without a visa? In the afternoon the telephone rang: “Are you ready? It is happening this evening.” Two hours later we collected the visa. Again it was only the children and I who had one. “We are working on it,” wrote the team at medica mondiale. “Set off!” In the evening we left Kabul. There was no time to hug my mother once more.   

It was January 21, 4:45pm, when our bus approached the border crossing at Herat after a 26-hour journey. Only 15 minutes remained until the border crossing closed. And my husband still did not have a visa. We waited. At 4:50pm my phone vibrated. But the signal was very bad. We stared at the tiny ‘loading’ icon. And at the border in front of us. “We have to go,” said the driver. And he started the bus. Finally - finally! - the visa appeared on my screen. “I’m free!” I thought.  

However, I am not completely free. Fear for the people in Afghanistan still has a hold on me. My mother and my siblings have had to move house twice because Taliban were threatening them. Two months ago my cousin was murdered by unknown assailants. He was 25 years old, and his wife eight months pregnant. And there is no more I can do to help them than I can do to help our former clients.  

Everyone has forgotten Afghanistan. My request to Western governments is at least to help the girls. Make sure they can go to school so that they – like me – have the chance of a future.