Witness 23 In-person Testimony

Hello and good time to everyone

My name is Hoda Khamosh, and I stand before you as one of the human rights activists from Afghanistan.

Is it alright?

I pledge that whatever I share is my observations and experiences from the early days of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Since I was living near the Kabul airport, from there, I witnessed the worst moments of my life, particularly when the suicide attack that tore human bodies into pieces—pieces scattered across hands, walls, the ground, the streets, and the dirty water where people were desperately trying to escape from the Taliban.

And spent days and nights there, to save their children, their dreams, their futures, trying to save, but they drowned.

I remember, and it moved my heart when the child whose hand clung to his mother’s finger—yet his mother was no longer there. Her torn body lay under a hijab or burqa, but he still held her finger in his mouth.

There was another child drowning in the water. I told my husband I would jump in and save the baby. He held my hand, lowered me into the water, and I managed to lift the child up.

He was crying, but not merely out of hunger or fear; maybe the baby needed his mother —a companion to save him. However, his ears were bleeding from the force of the explosion, pieces ….. pieces of bodies had struck him, and around his cradle. I saw a head with only the eyes left, limbs, and hands, some still moving despite having no body left. I was helpless, but I forced my heart to stay strong so I could be a savior at least.

We brought those children to the nearest shelter, where mothers agreed to care for the children.

Then we returned home. Taliban fighters were patrolling the streets, firing into the air and at people’s feet to force them into order.

We lived for seven days in silence and darkness, with only a small light behind closed curtains, barely daring to breathe.

One morning, as we ate breakfast, a plane took off from Kabul airport. At first, I remembered my childhood, when American aircraft sometimes dropped aid. But this time was different. As the plane rose, I saw a man fall from the airplane, falling directly in front of me, visible from the third floor of my home.

Part of his body hung on the ground and the other part on the top of the building.

These are only some of the memories that passed: suicide bombings, explosions, Taliban humiliations. Today, some people say there are no more suicide bombings in Afghanistan.

Does that mean the Taliban wants to suicide themselves? No. It means they no longer kill through bombs; in the past, they changed their clothes and appearance, leveraging between people, institutions, and society to kill and assassinate people. Now, they can do it with full power and information. 

I was deeply depressed and tried to leave Kabul. But the day I opened my door to escape, I found a letter from the Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture. It said: “You must surrender. You are a prostitute (fahesha), and your husband is a man with no honor (be gherat) that have been involved in a lot of immoral things and must pay the price.”

After that threatening letter, the calls and messages continued relentlessly with warnings in the Pashtu language and asking me to surrender myself to the Ministry of Information and Culture.

After that threatening letter, the unknown calls and messages continued relentlessly, asking me to present myself to the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture and “report my presence.”

My husband tried hiding what was happening, but eventually we packed the car and left Kabul. We returned again around September 3, hoping—still hoping—that maybe the Taliban had changed and would bring changes for Afghanistan, as the world kept insisting, they announced their cabinet with no women present in it.

Not long after, I joined a group of women protestors. We tried to believe that the Taliban’s promises would mean something: that schools and hospitals would reopen, that offices and organizations would resume work. But when the Taliban announced their cabinet, not a single woman, all hope evaporated. That is when we took to the streets.

I remember tying my shoes again and again before leaving home. I asked myself, “If I leave, will I return?” Every time, the answer was no. So I tied my shoes again and stepped out anyway.

I remembered the children at the airport, the boy who held his mother’s finger, the one woman with no husband, the one beaten.

At that same time, a Taliban Ranger truck passed under my building. They raided the home of a neighbor whose husband had served in the former Republic’s command in Khost. They smashed down the door, searched the house, and found him hiding in a closet with his teenage son. The Taliban broke the wardrobe, dragged them out, and as they begged not to be taken, the Taliban lined them up and shot both of them in the chest.

I called my colleague, Zholia Parsi, and said, “I’m going to the protest. Will you join me?” And we went.

When we started the protest, Taliban fighters surrounded us on motorcycles. They tried to seize phones, break cameras, and prevent journalists from recording anything. Actually, they were surprised and they had not expected that after the entire country had collapsed into their hands, after thousands had fled, women with bare hands would still stand in their way.

Well, as we marched toward the Presidential Palace, the Taliban attacked us, hitting women on their heads and faces with the butts of their rifles. One young man, who was one of the protesters’ brothers, tried to film the protest to send it to the media, but he was beaten so violently on his shoulder and face that he had to be rushed to the hospital.

Despite everything, the protest grew. By September 7 and 8, demonstrations had spread to multiple provinces. People across many provinces rose up and protested.

But none of our protests were met with peace. Every demonstration turned into violence, humiliation, beatings, sexual assault, and killings. I will never forget the protests in Mazar-e-Sharif on September 7& 8, when several women were arrested, tortured, and murdered. Days later, their bodies were found dumped behind mosques, in alleys, and even near garbage sites. The women I worked with in the north were in such grave danger that I had to secretly evacuate them and bring them to Kabul.

The same brutality confronted us during the protest of January 16 in front of Kabul University. When we tried to demand our basic human rights there, Taliban fighters came out wearing new uniforms to signal their identities had changed. They carried metal rods hidden under their sleeves and swung them at our wrists, hands, necks, and faces. Many of us fell to the ground in pain.

Despite their repeated claims that they required “mahram (male relative),” they grabbed girls by the collars of their clothes, dragged them, and sprayed pepper spray directly into their eyes. Some protestors suffered severe injuries; many had to be taken to the hospital because of the pepper spray and the electric shocks the Taliban used on them. Eventually, we were forced to stop the protest and retreat. Too many women had been seriously harmed.

After these demonstrations, the UN office inside Afghanistan invited us for meetings. We attended several sessions, trying to convey the reality of women’s uprising across the country, especially the situation in northern provinces where activists, young people, poets, writers, and journalists were being interrogated, tortured, disappeared, or killed. Their homes were burned, families terrorized. We wanted the UN to hear their voices through us.

During our third meeting, we met representative from Norway, who said they were acting as mediator between Afghan human rights defenders and the Taliban. They discussed organizing a program for us to sit with the Taliban and “find a way to move forward.” Many young women were present; our information was collected, and we were told we might be invited to a meeting.

The next day, I received an email saying I had been selected, along with two colleagues whose names I cannot mention for their safety, [to go to Norway.]

But even at that meeting, we had spoken openly about the consequences of the protests, the killings, the arrests, the disappearances. A translator was present to translate our conversations. To this day, I still cannot understand how information shared with the UN later ended up in Taliban hands. It still haunts me: How could the UN allow the details of participants, activists preparing to meet them, to be exposed, leading to arrests even before the meeting took place?

The day after receiving the invitation, I went to the hospital because of COVID, and afterward, I planned to buy proper clothes to attend the meeting. On the way, I saw a tweet by General Mobin, a senior Taliban figure. He had posted a picture of one of my colleagues and written: “Behead these prostitutes.” Then he said, “This prostitute is now beheaded.”

I immediately sent the tweet to my colleague and told her, “I’m on my way. You should go home, my home, to stay safe.” But she replied, “I will not leave. If I go, the girls will panic. I am here. I will close the curtains and guard the house. I will protect myself and my sisters.”

Minutes later, a video appeared online: Taliban fighters had stormed her home, breaking two metal gates, no, three doors to the hall, and two to the rooms. Another protester sent a message saying she had been arrested with her family on the street. A third girl wrote that the Taliban raided her home, beat her brother, and demanded she surrender herself. She was hiding in the clay oven (tandoor). Another woman, who had gone to the bazaar with her children, returned to find her parents taken hostage until she gave herself up.

The media began reporting on the arrests, and panic spread everywhere. I was overwhelmed with fear and stress. I didn’t know what to do.

Then, after the first protester was arrested, I received another message: “Where is your house?” The message was in Pashto, supposedly from my colleague, the same colleague who did not speak a word of Pashto. I showed it to my husband and said, “How is she sending this? She cannot speak Pashto.” And the message continued: “I am on my way. I am coming to my sisters.”

My husband said, “We need to leave immediately.”

I left my family with a trusted neighbor. Then my husband and I left.

Moments after I left the house, Taliban Rangers surrounded the entire building. Wearing my neighbor’s chadari, I hid behind a tree. From there, I watched as the Taliban, full of rage, smashed the windows, broke into the house, tore apart the mattresses, ripped family photos, destroyed carpets, and even ripped the couches. Where was I hiding there? No, it showed how indignation they had towards me. Their fury had only one purpose: to find me and my family.

They wanted to arrest us all. From the neighbor’s house, with the media now reporting the arrests of other women protestors, she was stressed and did not want us in her place. That night, I slept in the street, with a single burqa (chadari) and one piece of clothing.

The next morning, I received a message:
“You must go to the airport. This is the last message we will send you.”

In the first checkpoint, when I was in the taxi to the airport, I realized that the Taliban knew that some of the protesters were supposed to travel from Kabul to the Norway meeting. They had circulated the photos of women protestors at checkpoints, ordered their fighters to stop and identify us.

I pretended to be sick, bent my back. maybe it sounds strange to you and questionable, but this was our only strategy to survive, our only way to slip through the Taliban’s checkpoints. I acted weak, sick, and powerless to protect myself.

I walked out of the taxi when I saw my photo and other protesters. The fighters were ordered not to allow us to reach the airport and check all women, even with a chadari.

I passed through the first checkpoint with this trick. The same in the second, in Sarai Shamali. Then the third, near the airport. It was tough; it seems easy, but not for the one who had to execute it. Each time, I feared a bullet to my head, arrest, or rape.

When I reached the airport, foreigners and male passengers were entering through the official gate. But Afghan men and women in normal clothes, um, um, um, were being directed to the cargo gate where vehicles enter, and where the Taliban searched every bag and every person. Unfortunately, the Taliban put all security measures possible to catch the protesters.

A representative from the Norwegian government came to receive me. He [a Taliban member] signaled to me to come forward, but whispered, “You will be back, and your head will become a football.” I smiled and went in.

When I reached Norway and attended the meeting, I saw someone I should never have had to sit there, the man who testified to his responsibility for killing thousands of Afghans, thousands of mothers and children, yes, Anas Haqqani. I felt something break inside me. Is this a human right? Is this equality, to put me at the same table with a Taliban, as the man who murdered women and children?

The decision at the meeting was that we should provide the Taliban with “information” so they would “accept equality.” The Taliban refused the proposal. And the next day, they took the stage and openly claimed that Afghan women’s safety, work, and freedom, that prisons were empty, and that people are free. They lied in front of 22 international representatives.

I stood up and said:

“I came here from Afghanistan. Yesterday, my colleagues were arrested.
If you say this is a lie, call Kabul right now.”

The host asked to put the call on speakerphone. When Mr. Mutaqi asked if any women were in prison, the Taliban official replied:
“Yes. These prostitutes, these women, were arrested yesterday. They are here now.”

He ended the call. The lie was exposed. Yet the world still insists on “engagement” with the Taliban. But today, Afghan women are standing, sharing a lot of anecdotes, experiences, and stories with you. I hope these testimonies can help end the gender apartheid imposed on Afghanistan. We want equality, and Afghanistani women do not deserve this level of inequality and to live under the Taliban where the right to breathe is taken away from them.

Thank you.