For more than a year, Mariam*, an Afghan psychologist, has been trying to trace Farzana* and 14 other female survivors of domestic violence, whom she was counselling before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
After the takeover in August 2021, the organisation Mariam worked for was forced to close its offices, and many of her colleagues fled the country. But Mariam, who went into hiding and is now living in exile, continued to run a small operation discreetly, providing psychological support to vulnerable women, young people and mental health patients. “But there are 15 women who are untraceable. I have no idea where they are,” she says.
One of them is the 28-year-old Farzana, a survivor of domestic violence and a recovering addict, who was forced into drug dependency by her abusive husband of 12 years.
When Mariam first met Farzana in early 2019, she was in the process of securing a divorce, an arduous process during which she was abused, blackmailed, humiliated and lost custody of her three children. “I feel guilty about leaving the children with him but it was the only way I could escape his abuse,” Farzana told the Guardian in an interview in 2019.
“He is a horrible man. He would rape me, and if I tried to resist he beat me up. Then he started to drug me so I couldn’t fight back,” said Farzana, her hands trembling from the symptoms of withdrawal she was experiencing.
Even after the divorce, her husband broke into her house, raped her and beat her unconscious, she said.
Mariam says: “The violence only stopped after he was arrested and convicted in a murder case. She was finally able to be free of him, get her kids back and rebuild her life. She made a living teaching the Qur’an to neighbourhood kids, and during our last session she told me that she no longer needed my support.”
But a few weeks after their last session, in July 2021, Herat province fell to the Taliban, who released all prisoners from Afghan jails. “She called to tell me her husband was threatening her. He told her he had joined the Taliban and would find and punish her. She was terrified, and was in hiding with her children,” says Mariam.
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