MOTHER of three Nasima Daneshyar is one of seven Afghani women attending a peace conference this weekend in Nicosia to highlight the plight of her gender under Taliban rule.
Since Russia pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 Daneshyar has spent her self-imposed exile in Iran fighting for those she left behind whose lives have become an unimaginable hell.
Under ultra-extremist Taliban law, women are not allowed to work or even show their faces in public, schools have been shut to girls over eight years old, and whippings for the most minor ‘offences’ — such as showing an ankle — are a regular occurrence.
Daneshyar is one of the luckier ones who managed to leave the country, and she has pledged to devote her time to helping restore some sanity to her country.
The former teacher and newspaper editor works with a women’s group in Iran.
“I am out of Afghanistan, but what about the other woman still there?” she said. “It’s hard to believe the Taliban are even human beings.”
Although Daneshyar spent a good part of her earlier years in Pakistan, she and her husband, a political science lecturer, moved back to Afghanistan shortly after the Russians pulled out.
“When the Russians left it was a really nice feeling to think the war had ended. It was a big event in our country’s history and we were hopeful for the future,” she said. “But then the power struggle started.”
Eventually, after having to keep moving to stay ahead of the rebels, Daneshyar decided to take her children and move to India.
“Every day we had to move to safer and safer places. It was a short time for me but it was unbearable,” she said. “There was no health system, no schools, no medicines, no electricity… nothing.”
Her husband opted to remain in Afghanistan. “He thought we should remain and live among the people so he stayed,” she said. He became involved in peace efforts but was killed in a plane crash on a peace mission three years ago.
She has now taken up the gauntlet and has become highly critical of the international community’s failure to act on Afghanistan.
“This is the year 2000 and I’m surprised at how the world can sit back and ignore the situation. How can the US, the UN and Europe, claimers of human rights do nothing?” she asked. “The Taliban don’t believe the woman is a human being and Afghanistan is now a dead body. It’s a shameful situation and as a woman I’m not satisfied with the UN shutting their eyes to this.”
Daneshyar said her mission is not political but humanitarian. “In every war women suffer the most as mothers, wives and sisters. We want peace and we need it for our children,” she said. “Our main goal and concern is peace, and that’s why we have gathered here.”
The three-day Nicosia conference, organised by the Centre for World Dialogue, is also being attended by Taliban representatives along with Cypriot, UN, British, American, German, Russian and Iranian officials.
