Carolyn Beeler: If all of these rights are being eroded, what does that mean everyday life looks like for women and girls in Afghanistan?

Mahbouba Seraj: It’s pretty bad. It really is. It’s actually very bad. Because of the five-year anniversary, the world wants to talk to us, and I’m glad I’m here and I can talk about it. It might be the last time I’m doing this from Afghanistan, but I am now. And I cannot tell you how devastating the whole thing is, how badly we all feel. What the parents are doing, they’re actually marrying off their daughters, one after another, at a very young age because they want to keep them safe from the Taliban.

At what age?

After the age of 12, they’re all doing that.

And if that doesn’t happen, the risk is that the Taliban will choose someone for these girls to marry?

That’s right. And the parents are very afraid of that.

I just read this stark statistic that a survey by the UN Women’s agency found that half of the women they reached leave home only once or twice a month. Does that sound right to you?

That’s about it. That’s true. That’s very true. They don’t get out of the house anymore.

What is that doing to people’s mental health that you have experienced or seen?

That’s another thing that is really, really very bad. I know that because I’ve also been in Afghanistan since 2003. I’ve been here since the Taliban arrived in 2021. In these five years, what it has done on my psyche and my emotional being and my heart and my soul, I cannot tell you. Especially after they closed my shelter because I had a shelter for abused women, my organization did. Dec. 10, 2025, they came and closed my shelter, and I lost my right to protect the girls, women and children at my facility, and I was looking after them for years and years, since 2017. People came from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and they took my girls by force. They really did. They were all crying, screaming and yelling. That was the only shelter that was functioning in Afghanistan since the Taliban arrived.

What happened to those girls?

They put them in an orphanage in Kabul. So, they took all of the girls in there. They didn’t allow me to go and see them. I’m still not allowed. I haven’t seen my girls in the past eight months.

That’s devastating.

Absolutely. I cannot tell you what a heartbreak that was because all of these girls call me mother. I am their mother, for God’s sake. I am. I was looking after them, I was being with them, and we were eating together. Especially a group of six I brought from the shelter into my house so I could be closer to them and teach them. My shelter is very strict because we have to keep our girls safe.

Can you just describe how the girls ended up in your shelter? What kind of situations were they in?

All of them, first of all, they were because of the violence in their family.

Survivors of abuse.

Yeah, survivors of abuse, either by their fathers, by their husbands, in-laws, brothers, uncles, all of them. We fought so hard and so long, all of us women in Afghanistan, to give rights to women, to make the courts and open up facilities and institutions that can help these women. And we did that. We were successful. And that’s how all of these shelters opened up all over Afghanistan. [At one point], there were about 27 of them. And by the time the Taliban arrived, I was the only one functioning.

What did Taliban officials say was the reason that they were shutting down your shelter?

They believe that NGOs or private sector women, even a white-haired woman like me, 78 years old, don’t have the right to give safety and keep these girls, these women safe because that’s the job of the government.

You mentioned that you can’t stay in Afghanistan any longer. What is your plan?

I’ll see what happens, you know. Maybe I’ll go someplace in the world that accepts me, maybe in Europe, or I can just wait and see how things are in Afghanistan, how they turn out. I don’t know, really. I really don’t know. I’m very tired right now, very tired, very disappointed, very disillusioned and heartbroken. Heartbroken. Because the situation of women is really bad here, really bad.

Does speaking out about this, like you’re doing right now with me, does that put you in danger? Is that another reason you need to leave?

If it puts me in danger, it puts me in danger. I promised the women of Afghanistan, the ones that their voices can’t be heard, that I will be their voice. So, I want to keep that. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. And I cannot shut up because, you know, the Afghan women, they are being crushed, they are being destroyed, they’re being — has been taken away from them, and it’s all done by force. That’s what it is. And that’s why I’m doing it.

Mahbooba, secondary education has now been outlawed for women for five years. Can you tell me about this generation of girls who are not being educated? Tell me anything about what they’re doing instead or what they are facing.

One thing about the Afghan girls I want to tell you: they are absolutely phenomenal. Their desire to learn is beyond belief. Absolutely beyond belief. And they’re doing anything and everything in their power. So, they’re trying to get any kind of education that they can get their hands on.

How are they going about getting some sort of education? Is this kind of underground schools or online?

Yeah, online. Mostly online. I mean, we are hoping that the government allows us to have the internet. And I’m sure if it’s up to them, they can shut it down anytime, but hopefully they won’t. So, so far, that’s what we have. Institutions were open for women to learn things, like becoming a nurse or becoming a doctor’s aide or things like that, that they were all studying. They closed that, too. That’s also gone. It’s not only schools; anything to do with education, anything to do with learning, is gone.

What about international humanitarian organizations in Afghanistan? I know that the Taliban recently detained UN and NGO personnel, including staff connected to a women’s and children’s rights organization. Are any international organizations working on women’s rights there still?

There are international organizations, international NGOs are here, they’re working, they’re trying to do their best they can. Some of them are allowed; some of them are not allowed, but I don’t think it’s going to last, really. If this trend continues, that’s all going to shut down also. You know, this is called apartheid, I’m sure, because the law of the land is not to help women, not to let women get an education, not to let women go out of the house. So, what is it if it’s not apartheid? What is it?

Are there Afghan women who are managing to publicly challenge the Taliban right now? You mentioned people educating themselves kind of surreptitiously. Are there people who are standing up against the government? And what happens if they do?

Well, some girls at the beginning did try, and they tried to stand up. They were either taken out of the country, a whole lot of them got imprisoned, some of them were just shut down, and they never opened their mouths because it’s not allowed. Families cannot really allow their daughters to be doing that, nor can they put up with it. So yeah, it’s no longer there. No longer.

I wonder if you could just paint a picture for our listeners of what the Taliban envisions as the world for women going forward.

Speaking of the future of Afghanistan, what is the impact of these restrictions on women’s lives, on all of society? I mean, taking, you know, half of the workforce out of the picture, etc.

That, to me, is absolutely unacceptable. What is going to happen to other generations? What is going to happen to the boys? What kind of men are they going to become? We are right now the group of people in the world that nobody wants to have anything to do with us. We are the most disliked human beings. The young men of this country, they are so disillusioned; they are so hopeless. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. They have a right to live, a right to work, a right to dream. Why is it like this? Why? I’m not saying we are not Muslims. We are, thanks to Allah. We are, Alhamdulillah. But that has nothing to do with our advancement. It has nothing to do with our achievements. It has nothing to do with our development. It has nothing to do with that. We should be allowed to develop our country, our people, our society, our education. We are left far, far behind.

Mahbouba, you were born in Kabul. You were imprisoned by its communist government in 1978. You were forced into exile. You returned in 2003 and have spent most of the last 23 years there. You say now is the time that you think you have to leave. Why this moment? Why have you not left at other challenging moments? And what has driven you to decide that now is the time?

I cannot work anymore. My being here is no longer useful. That is killing me. It really is. You know, it becomes very hard for a person who is working, not because she needs money, not because she loves money, loves power, loves fame. No. No, I’m an Afghan. I love my people. I love the men and women of Afghanistan with all of my heart. I want to work for them. I want to work by them. And I cannot do it. I cannot do it now.

You mentioned that boys and men, as well, are also disillusioned. Can you tell me a little bit about how boys are being raised right now in this environment?

The poor boys, their mothers, I don’t think, are very involved in the upbringing of the boys, very little, because that right has been taken away from them slowly and slowly.

So, moms are basically cut out of the picture at home? It’s dads totally in charge of the rearing of boys?

Yeah, grandfathers, uncles, big brothers. Yeah, absolutely. When they are very little, you know, babies, and their mother is giving them milk — that’s different. After that, when they grow up, no, it’s finished. And one of the reasons why I am talking right now, and I will talk until the last breath while I’m here, nobody wants to think that Afghanistan is a failure. Nobody wants to think that Afghanistan is struggling. Nobody. But at the same time, for God’s sake, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? And right now is the beginning of it. As time goes on, it’s going to get a lot worse. More and more and more and more and more. Yeah.