Alive, but unable to thrive under absolute patriarchy

Since the Taliban returned to power, women and girls have tried defiance, but despair at their harshly restricted lives

- Meélissa Cornet

Earlier this year, I spent 10 weeks travelling with the photographer Kiana Hayeri across seven provinces of Afghanistan, speaking to more than 100 Afghan women and girls about how their lives had changed since the Taliban swept back to power.

Hayeri and I both lived in Afghanistan for years, and remained here after the Taliban took control in August 2021.

In the past few years, we have seen women's rights and freedoms, already curtailed, swept away as Taliban edicts have fallen like hammer blows.

Afghan women have been banned from schools, universities, most workplaces even parks and bathhouses.

From Kandahar, the political headquarters of the Taliban, the group's leaders have dictated that women must cover their faces in public, always be accompanied by a man and never let their voices be heard in public.

As foreign women, we still carried the rare privilege of freedom of movement, which has nearly disappeared for the 14 million Afghan women and girls across the country. Meeting women while ensuring their security was a daily challenge.

Each province we travelled to revealed different shades of oppression. In some areas in the south and east in particular - women were already living under very restricted conditions before the Taliban's official return, with many saying that now, at least, there was no more violence.

For many, the Taliban's refusal to allow girls to attend secondary education has been the hardest blow. We met Gulsom, 17, who survived a suicide attack on her school a few months before the Taliban came back into power. Severely wounded, she must now use a wheelchair and had to continue her studies at an underground school.

But Gulsom insisted: "My will to study and work hard has increased." Yet her younger sister, who is 14, seems to have lost hope. She has left the house only a few times in more than two years.