Afghan women in fear as Taliban go door to door in search of those who worked for ‘enemies’
Many of the women of Afghanistan are frightened right now. And those who worked for the foreigners who’ve pulled out of the country, are even more so.
They are some of the top Taliban targets and too many of them are telling us how the Taliban are going from door to door, trying to find those who once worked for the “enemies”.
Officially, there’s an amnesty. Unofficially, there are scores being settled and intimidation is rife.
There are many more people out in the market than we’ve seen in the previous few days
“Why did I work for the US?” one 24-year-old woman asks us.
“That [when we are in] such a situation they are not responding us (sic)… not hearing us? It’s a waste of my work experience, all those years. It’s a waste of effort, it’s a waste of struggle, it’s a waste of everything right now. I even carry some kind of hate in my heart for them.”
She and her sister have travelled with their uncle to where we are staying. They were too scared to talk to us openly.
They saw us filming in a market in the capital and the younger sister (who we will call “Tabasum” for her safety), tells us she watched us for two hours before summoning up the courage to pull Sky producer Chris Cunningham to one side.
“Please, I want you to interview me,” she told him. “I can’t talk here because our lives are in danger.”
Speaking to women at the market
It has taken tremendous bravery to speak up at all. We are just a few metres away from an armed Taliban checkpoint. The fighters who are patrolling through the market, with weapons slung over their shoulders, tell us how we are seeing a different, better side of Kabul.
“A few weeks ago you would not have been able to come here because of the security,” the Talib tells us. There appears to be no irony in his voice.
There are many more people out in the market than we’ve seen in the previous few days. And there is a marked increase in the number of women in public.
Initially, the Taliban instructed women to stay indoors “for security reasons”. But while we are here there are many thronging the stalls.
Talibs at the market checkpoint
We notice they are all wearing long flowing dresses or coats and headscarves or hijabs – a number are in the all-enveloping burka. Many appear to have a male companion (mahram) shepherding the groups of females around.
We ask the Taliban commander manning the checkpoint what he does to enforce any dress code. He replies that so long as the women adhere to Sharia law, there’s no issue.
Another Talib interrupts. “It’s an Islamic society,” he says. “And there is no need to tell them to wear hijab, we haven’t had to ask them…everyone is obeying that now.”
When you’re the ones holding the guns, perhaps you don’t need to persuade too hard.
Initially, the Taliban instructed women to stay indoors ‘for security reasons’
In the room where we are secretly meeting the young women, they spread out their paperwork which shows extensive links with USAID and other foreign aid groups like CARE, which has a base in Britain.
There are 25 members of their extended family with eight of them children. Almost all of the adults used to work for foreign aid groups or they are female teachers, now in danger.
The young women’s mother is a principal at a girls’ high school.
Street children at the Taliban checkpoint
“Look at this death threat she received from the Taliban,” Murro shows us. She flicks through her phone to find the scrawled letter from the Taliban which was investigated and verified by the previous administration.
The letter says: “Our main aim and work is to kill all students, teachers and the principal.”
They talk about their mother opening the door to their home a few days after Kabul fell to the Islamist group to find a gaggle of armed Taliban outside.
“They just demanded food and came in,” Tabasum says. “I was standing in my bedroom just shaking. I could not believe it.”
Tabasum (not her real name) speaking to Sky’s Alex Crawford
The Taliban fighters began to regularly march into the house demanding food, or tea and asking questions about who they worked for.
“Did you work for the old government,” one Talib asked them. “There are rumours you worked for the foreigners…”
“We decided we needed to move then,” Tabasum says. They’ve been on the run ever since.
They show us photographs with the former US first lady Laura Bush taken in Washington DC. There are others standing proudly with British soldiers.
“We love our country. We were proud to work for Afghanistan and build a new future,” says 24-year-old Murro. “I empowered 900 women during my career with USAID. Now what am I? I am not empowered. I am told I cannot work and I’m told how to dress.
“I worry about the future, not just my future but my family’s future and the country’s future. Have you ever felt you are living in a country that is not your country anymore? That’s how I feel right now.”
Tabasum (not her real name) has spoken out about her experiences
They tell us of how the friends and partners they worked with for years have now turned their backs on them. How none of their emails and applications for asylum are being answered or even responded to.
WhatsApps go unread, calls are not picked up.
Tabasum was one day away from finishing her business degree. She was due to complete her thesis at one of Kabul’s top universities on Monday.
The airport suicide bombing which killed nearly two hundred including 13 US service personnel happened on the Sunday before.
“In one day, my life changed. All the lecturers left the country. The university is now empty. All four years of my studying is wasted.”
She had a job but her superiors rang her up and told her it wasn’t safe for her to come in as a woman and that she should stay at home. Almost half the staff were women, now all sitting at home.
“They don’t want me because I’m a girl,” Tabasum says. “I don’t have the right to come out of my home now without a male. Why? Because this is an inequality. I don’t have the same rights as a boy. I am nothing for them.”
“I have become invisible. I used to have a job. I am educated. I don’t need any man. But now I am just nothing.”
The Taliban has made reassurances that it respects women’s rights
She’s wearing a full-length coat and black hijab. “Before I never wore a hijab,” she says. “I wore T-shirt and jeans. Now I can’t go anywhere without covering my head and wearing these clothes.”
Despite all the reassurances from the Taliban that they respect women’s rights, the women of Afghanistan do not believe them.
And the Taliban are dealing with a tougher, better educated, more liberal Afghan woman now – many of them in their 20s or 30s.
The Taliban checkpoint at night
They have aspirations and educated minds which has put fire in their stomachs and sent courage soaring through their veins. We’ve seen them take to the streets to fight for their rights – and not back down even when staring down the barrel of a gun.
The Taliban fighters may be manning the checkpoints and prowling the area with guns but the Afghan women are not prepared to return to the times their mothers endured.
We set out to meet a female activist and mother of three who we interviewed before the Taliban took control. We will call her “Fatima”.
She also worked for a series of foreign NGO’s focused on running female empowerment courses and skill projects for women.
Colourful clothes are on sale at markets
She too received written death threats from the Taliban as well as threatening texts and frightening phone calls.
She told us weeks before the Taliban marched into the capital that she was in fear of her life and was terrified her three young children were going to be harmed as the Taliban had warned of killing her whole family.
She’d taken refuge in a women’s shelter then. Since then even that’s not safe. The Taliban have moved in and she’s moving constantly now with her family from friends’ home to friends’ home.
She was cleared to be evacuated by the British military and received a confirmation email but hours later got another warning her not to travel to the airport or the Baron Hotel because of a precise security threat which turned out to be the suicide bomber who blew himself up the following day.
Taliban checkpoint
Since then she’s been getting increasingly desperate as evacuation flights have been halted.
Those left behind who did so much service for Afghanistan and worked with such faith with the foreign partners, they never expected to leave so hurriedly, are feeling forgotten and in many ways betrayed.
“I prefer to die at sea at the hands of human traffickers trying to escape here than be killed by the Taliban,” Fatima tells us. “But I’m a prisoner here right now.”
Two things can be true at the same time – an adage so apt for the past day.
This was the Trump show. There’s no question about that. It was a show called by him, pulled off for him, attended by leaders who had no other choice and all because he craves the ego boost.
Gaza deal signed – as it happened
But the day was also an unquestionable and game-changing geopolitical achievement.
World leaders, including Trump and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, pose for a family photo. Pic: Reuters
Trump stopped the war, he stopped the killing, he forced Hamas to release all the hostages, he demanded Israel to free prisoners held without any judicial process, he enabled aid to be delivered to Gaza, and he committed everyone to a roadmap, of sorts, ahead.
He did all that and more.
He also made the Israel-Palestine conflict, which the world has ignored for decades, a cause that European and Middle Eastern nations are now committed to invest in. No one, it seems, can ignore Trump.
Love him or loathe him, those are remarkable achievements.
‘Focus of a goldfish’
The key question now is – will he stay the course?
One person central to the negotiations which have led us to this point said to me last week that Trump has the “focus of a goldfish”.
Benjamin Netanyahu applauds while Trump addresses the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Pic: Reuters
It’s true that he tends to have a short attention span. If things are not going his way, and it looks likely that he won’t turn out to be the winner, he quickly moves on and blames someone else.
So, is there a danger of that with this? Let’s check in on it all six months from now (I am willing to be proved wrong – the Trump-show is truly hard to chart), but my judgement right now is that he will stay the course with this one for several reasons.
First, precisely because of the show he has created around this. Surely, he won’t want it all to fall apart now?
He has invested so much personal reputation in all this, I’d argue that even he wouldn’t want to drop it, even when the going gets tough – which it will.
Second, the Abraham Accords. They represented his signature foreign policy achievement in his first term – the normalisation of relations between Israel and the Muslim world.
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How a huge day for the Middle East unfolded
Back in his first presidency, he tried to push the accords through without solving the Palestinian question. It didn’t work.
This time, he’s grasped the nettle. Now he wants to bring it all together in a grand bargain. He’s doing it for peace but also, of course, for the business opportunities – to help “make America great again”.
Peace – and prosperity – in the Middle East is good for America. It’s also good for Trump Inc. He and his family are going to get even richer from a prosperous Middle East.
Read more:
Trump hails ‘peace in the Middle East’
His team ripped up golden rule to pull off peace plan
Then there is the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn’t win it this year. He was never going to – nominations had to be in by January.
But next year he really could win – especially if he solves the Ukraine challenge too.
If he could bring his coexistence and unity vibe to his own country – rather than stoking the division – he may stand an even greater chance of winning.
World
French PM Sebastien Lecornu shelves Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform in bid for political survival
France’s reappointed prime minister has offered to suspend controversial reforms to the country’s pension system, days after returning to the top role.
Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, which gradually raises the age at which a worker can retire on a full pension from 62 to 64, was forced through without a vote in parliament after weeks of street protests in 2023.
Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday he would postpone the introduction of the scheme, one of Mr Macron’s main economic policies, until after the 2027 presidential election.
With two no-confidence votes in parliament this week, Mr Lecornu had little choice but to make the offer to secure the support of left-wing MPs who demanded it as the price of their support for his survival.
Mr Lecornu in parliament on Tuesday. Pic: Reuters
The prime minister will hope it is enough to get a slimmed-down 2026 budget passed at a time when France’s public finances are in a mess.
It will be seen as a blow to Mr Macron, leaving him with little in the way of domestic achievements after eight years in office. But it reflects the reality that giving ground on the landmark measure was the only way to ensure the survival of his sixth prime minister in under two years.
Mr Lecornu told MPs he will “suspend the 2023 pension reform until the presidential election”.
“No increase in the retirement age will take place from now until January 2028,” he added.
Read more:
Police use tear gas on Belgian protesters
Migrant who threatened to kill Farage jailed
The move will cost the Treasury €400m (£349m) in 2026, and €1.8bn (£1.5bn) the year after, he said, warning it couldn’t just be added to the deficit and “must therefore be financially offset, including through savings measures”.
Mr Lecornu, 39, was reappointed as prime minister by Mr Macron on Friday, four days after he resigned from the role just hours after naming his cabinet – and after political rivals threatened to topple his government.
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French PM returns to role days after quitting
On re-taking office, he pledged to “put an end to this political crisis, which is exasperating the French people, and to this instability, which is bad for France’s image and its interests”.
Economists in Europe have previously warned that France – the EU’s second-largest economy – faces a Greek-style debt crisis, with its deficit at 5.4%.
Mr Lecornu is hoping to bring that down to 4.7% with an overall package of cuts totalling €30bn (£26bn), but his plans were dismissed as wishful thinking by France’s independent fiscal watchdog.
Mr Macron has burned through five prime ministers in less than two years, but has so far refused to call another election or resign.
A freed Palestinian prisoner, one of about 1,700 detainees from Gaza who had been held by Israel without charge, has described scenes of systematic torture, humiliation and death inside Israeli detention.
Akram al Basyouni, 45, from northern Gaza, says he was detained on 10 December 2023 at a shelter school in Jabalia and spent nearly two years in custody, including at the Sde Teiman military base.
“Many of our fellow prisoners were beaten to the point of death,” he told Sky News. “When we cried out to the guards for help, they would answer coldly, ‘Let him die’. Five minutes later they would take the body away, wrap it in a bag, and shut the door.”
Al Basyouni said detainees were routinely tortured, beaten with batons and fists, attacked by dogs and gassed during what guards called a “reception ceremony”.
“They beat us so savagely our ribs were shattered. They poured boiling water over the faces and backs of young men until their skin peeled away. We sat on cold metal floors for days, punished even for asking for help.”
Sky News has contacted the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and the Israel Defense Forces for comment but has not yet received a response.
Al Basyouni claimed prisoners were forced to remain on their knees for long hours, deprived of clothing and blankets, and subjected to religious and psychological abuse.
“They cursed the Prophet, tore up the Koran in front of us, and insulted our mothers and sisters in the foulest language,” he said. “They told us our families were dead. ‘There is no Gaza,’ they said. ‘We killed your children.'”
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Palestinian prisoners released
Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons in past exchanges have reported frequent beatings, insufficient food and deprivation of medical care.
A 2024 UN report said that since 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been held arbitrarily and incommunicado by Israel, often shackled, subject to torture and deprived of food, water, sleep and medical care.
Israel has maintained that it follows international and domestic legal standards for the treatment of prisoners and that any prison personnel violations are investigated.
Its National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the country’s prisons, has on multiple occasions boasted about making conditions for Palestinians as harsh as possible while remaining within the law.
Al Basyouni claimed many detainees, including doctors, died from beatings or medical neglect.
“I heard about Dr Adnan al-Bursh, may God have mercy on him,” he said. “He was struck in the chest by a prison guard, over his heart. He lost consciousness immediately and died five minutes later.”
Read more from Sky News:
Trump warned his plan for Gaza ‘doesn’t make sense’
Hamas official says Blair isn’t welcome in Gaza role
Sky News’ own investigation found that Dr al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most respected surgeons, died after being tortured in Israeli custody, sustaining broken ribs and severe injuries while being held at Ofer Prison.
Al Basyouni said he also met Dr Hossam Abu Safiya at Ofer and heard that Dr Akram Abu Ouda had been “subjected to severe and repeated torture.”
“Even the doctors were beaten and denied treatment,” he said. “Many reached the brink of death.”
In response to our investigation into Dr al-Bursh’s death, a spokesman for the Israel Prison Service said at the time: “We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility.”
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