When the Afghan government fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, Laila Naseri knew her life was going to be turned upside down. Life for most Afghans was different, but the threats against it were immediate.
As a single woman in her early 20s, she would be forced to submit to the restrictions of the brutally misogynistic Taliban regime, which is determined to impose a radical form of Islamic fundamentalism on women. As a result, the 23-year-old was relegated to the house and the hijab, the headgear imposed on women by the ruling party. In recent months, this has evolved into mandatory head-to-toe coverings in public, including face coverings.
Wherever she goes, a woman must now be accompanied by a male relative. There are no exceptions, even if she is fleeing domestic violence. Only older women and young girls are exempt from wearing the burqa in public. Violations can result in jail time for the father or closest male relative, who can also be fired from government jobs.
The dress decree was described by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader and Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, as “traditional and respectful”. His aim, he said, was “to avoid any provocation when meeting men who are not mahram [adult close male relatives]In other words, if men cannot control themselves in the presence of a woman, it behooves women to dress provocatively.
So imagine what the Taliban think of female models, strutting down the catwalks, sometimes dressed in Western clothes, sometimes striking sultry poses for TV commercials, or even flirting.
It had been Laila Naseri’s job for three years when the Taliban took power.
“If the Taliban know about the models, they will kill them,” the 23-year-old told me through an interpreter in Des Moines. “I couldn’t leave the house.”
Within days, she learned that women working in the media were being evacuated from Afghanistan, so she and a friend drove to Kabul airport to try to brief officials on their situation. She was clutching her modeling documents to show that she was rightfully in danger. The security guards they spoke to outside the airport told them to wait while they went inside to speak with their superiors.
From there, it was a whirlwind. Upon their return, the men let the women into the airport where, the following day, they were flown to Dubai for four days for processing. Naseri, not expecting such a quick action, had no luggage, only the clothes she was wearing. His passport had gone to Germany with someone else. They entered the United States via Washington, DC on August 29 and eventually arrived in Des Moines via Wisconsin.
Naseri was one of some 700 Afghans to be relocated here. Since leaving Afghanistan, she learned that two of the women she had modeled with had been shot while driving out of Kabul. The founder of Modelstan, the first of Afghanistan’s modeling agencies, fled to Germany after being warned he would be killed. Hamed Valy had studied in India and said he returned to Afghanistan hoping to gain acceptance for fashion and glamor in his home country.
Now they are issuing death threats.
In Des Moines, life for Naseri takes on a semblance of normality, and she feels safe and free here. But it was a rocky start, as the registry previously documented, and the future isn’t guaranteed. The resettlement of many Afghans has been fraught with difficulties. Many lacked adequate food and services, lived in substandard temporary accommodation, and could not get social workers from resettlement agencies to answer their calls for help.
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Naseri said it was particularly difficult to be one of the few single women in the group. “I’m very sad. I’m broken. I’m suffocating in this room,” she told the Register in April. Things have improved since she moved into better accommodation and has a job. But far from the glamorous and very competitive side that she had posed for the camera, she works a night shift to pack car parts. During the day she sleeps and three days a week at 5:30 p.m. she takes lessons. English at DMACC through the Refugee Program of Lutheran Services in Iowa.
She doesn’t speak English, so this interview was done with an interpreter friend.
Without a driver’s license or a car, Naseri depends on others to go where she cannot walk. The Register’s Lee Rood has taken her under his wing since witnessing her struggles, and Naseri has many friends. She just wishes her parents and siblings were with her.
The Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996 after the withdrawal of US and former Soviet Union forces. It remained under control until 2001, when the United States invaded in search of Osama bin Laden, following the September 11 attacks.
After that, some women’s rights were restored, so Naseri had not personally experienced such repression before. A new constitution was adopted, strengthening women’s rights, and a law on the elimination of violence against women was passed in 2009. But the former ministry of women’s affairs has now been replaced by the ministry of promoting virtue and preventing vice, which gives you a sense of priorities.
In 2009, at the Registry, we received a visit from another 23-year-old Afghan woman who had suffered from Taliban extremism when both her parents were killed. She had gone on to write the 2003 book “Zoya’s Story”, using only her first name due to threats to her life. Although she moved to Pakistan with her grandmother, she wrote and spoke about joining the Women’s Revolutionary Association of Afghanistan and returning to Afghanistan to help organize underground schools for girls, among other things.
But with the return to power of the Taliban, girls beyond the sixth grade are no longer allowed to go to school. “Is it a sin to be a girl, is it a sin to seek an education?” asked a tearful person captured on news video.
Zoya’s trip to America at the time was intended to encourage the government to withdraw American troops. Many Afghans felt that the United States had turned its back on Afghanistan after the fall of the former Soviet Union, leaving a vacuum into which the Taliban entered; they didn’t want to see history repeat itself.
Unfortunately, this is the case.
Some of the newer refugees believe last year’s outcome could have been avoided had the United States done more, sooner, to help create a more stable Afghan government and better equip it to resist the Taliban. When NATO troops withdrew last August, the Taliban sworn not to reimpose the same strict rules on women as during his previous term. But he did just that, prompting the United States and other countries to cut development aid and impose sanctions on the banking system.
The new Afghan emigrants are here on a two-year “humanitarian parole” status. This status is granted by the Secretary of Homeland Security to persons deemed ineligible for refugee status. But it is granted only for emergency, humanitarian and public interest reasons. first year for political asylum to remain in force. This requires proof that they would be targets if they returned. But many do not have access to lawyers.
Naseri was lucky enough to get one, and given her modeling background, she should have a strong case.
When she is homesick, Naseri says she prays. In Afghanistan, under the Taliban regime, women are not even allowed to go to mosques. Demanding extreme piety from women without even letting them into places of worship is just another cruel hoax from a government that should never have come back. Yet despite all the bloodshed, upheaval, years of foreign intervention and vows to do good for women, and despite all the courageous resistance, this brutal and extremist regime is free to victimize women again.
Russia, when it was the Soviet Union, helped establish education and jobs for women when it controlled Afghanistan. Now he’s busy invading Ukraine. And in America, which went to Afghanistan 21 years ago to talk about women’s rights, women are preparing for the loss of the most basic right to their own bodies.
It may be too late to reverse some of the damage wrought in our wake, but our government can and should grant long-term status to Afghans who have fled here. We should not ask them to prove that they were specifically threatened when we know that all Afghan women are threatened. And the same goes for the men who helped the US military there. There is still time to do the right thing for those forced to flee, and our government should do it.