Fighting and negotiating with the Taliban – An Interview with Human Rights Defender Nazifa Jalali
- Esther Wolff
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
“I'm impressed… I'm shocked… I have no words”. That’s all I was able to utter when Nazifa told me her story. Afterwards, I blamed myself for not having been able to formulate something more intelligent, more political, or perhaps more comforting. She uses words that are sometimes difficult, to express a story of strength and courage, and I, arms flailing and mouth dry, reply, in words, that I have no words.
Then I told snippets of Nazifa's story to my closest friends, and they too had the arms-flailing-mouth-dry-no-words reaction. Or sometimes I’d get a “wow”. So I realized that this is probably the only reaction you can actually have, at least when you've lived, as I have, without political violence and with the right, and the choice, to live my life as I see fit.
Nazifa Jalali is 27 years old, yet she has lived a hundred. From birth, Nazifa has always been a force of nature. Grown up from an early age and supported by her mother, she worked all her life so that her Afghan sisters could go to school rather than get married. She was attacked three times by the Taliban, before their return to power in 2021, when she was forced to leave her beloved country and her loved ones. Nazifa now lives in Norway with her family, where she has resumed her studies and works as a human rights defender, representing Afghan women at the United Nations, sometimes even for negotiations with the Taliban. She has lived through so much, suffered so much, and she tells me that not a day, not a minute, goes by without her remembering her family. Some are gone, others are still fighting. I don't know if she can see it, but for me, Nazifa is a firefly; although she fights against a darkness that suffocates and gags, she speaks with clarity. Nazifa is luminous, courageous, determined, and incredibly kind. The following pages contain extracts from my interview with Nazifa Jalali. If you'd like to find out more, Nazifa will be visiting us in early June for a talk at Maastricht University.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Nazifa Jalali, I'm 27 years old, I am from North Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, I have the bachelor in law and the semi bachelor in Islamic Sharia. But when the Taliban came to power in 2021, I left Afghanistan, I came to Norway and I got to fellowships.
I am the steering committee member of HRD+, the director for LYS, a volunteer organization that has activities inside and outside Afghanistan. and the co-founder of Chiragh TV. I can say I'm a human rights defender. In Afghanistan, I had my own company with 2500 young people and women who worked with me. As you know, in Afghanistan most of the new generation is abused by the Taliban. So at the moment, in Norway I registered my organization, and we document lots of human rights violations inside Afghanistan, we work with young leaders inside Afghanistan and for the economic empowerment of the youth and of women. We have our committees in Afghanistan, including the youth’s committee, the women’s committee and the committee of male and female religious scholars. In this organization, most of the human rights defenders, the civil society activists, the journalists, we are working for freedom of expression as well, so we have a media by the name of Chiragh TV. The goal is to support journalism, because in Afghanistan, all the TV channels are under the control of the Taliban. And most of the female journalists, they lost their jobs. Recently, we removed Lys’s website because the Taliban arrested some of our members in Afghanistan. But we recreated our social media and we will publish some of our statements and activities again, using a high security policy.
Can you tell me a bit about your path that led you to being a human rights defender today?
Sometimes, people or colleagues ask me about my childhood, and I'm asking myself, what childhood? I was not a child, I always had thoughts about difficult things because I experienced very hard times. I was born in Afghanistan in the late 90s, in the first period of the Taliban. My father was an army commander and I lost him when I was just seven months. And then after him, my mom took our responsibility and struggled a lot to take care of my three brothers and me. She worked hard for us. So I witnessed from a very young age how hard life is for mom. When I was 10 years old, I started working for a program for kids in a local radio station and I was so lucky because mom was behind me. People were sending messages to mom saying: “your daughter is a bad daughter, the people at the radio abuse her, you are not a good mom, you are not a good woman.” I was so upset because no other kids played with me since they were told to stay away from me and that my family doesn’t have any honor.
But when I was 15 years old, my mom came and she told me: Nazifa, if you want to work in this society, be aware there will be a lot of people who will not accept you, and if you want to marry, don't work, because never an Afghan boy will marry with a girl like you who is working outside without any fear. This doesn't mean that all Afghan men have the same ideologies, but in the society we live in, my work and even I, would not be acceptable for them. If you want to work, accept all these difficulties, accept the bad words from the people, Accept there will be the Taliban. At that time, I just thought, it's OK, I'm working, but I have mom and she will be here all the time. When I was in 10th grade at school, I started working with the World Food Program next to school. We went to other schools to distribute food, to support the kids and families and to push them to go to school. I traveled to 360 districts of Afghanistan to meet the new generation, to meet the kids, to meet the families. They send their kids because of economic poverty to the Pakistani madrassas, where they created their forces, they created their armies, and they perpetuated their ideologies.
One day I travelled to one of the districts of the Zabul province, and it was the big accident in my life, my vision, my struggles, everything. The Taliban stopped our car and shot my colleague, Doctor Ghani, who was one of my best colleagues. And I was just 15 years old and they killed my colleague in front of my eyes and they beated me, saying “why are you here, why don't you wear niqab, why don't you cover your face?”. And that time I decided to start working for human rights, for women's rights; to struggle. In the past years, of course there were some changes, we struggled and we had good results, for example our last conference in Kandahar province in the South region of Afghanistan, in April 2021, two thousand women and young people participated in that conference.
Nazifa helped the women whose husbands fought in the ranks of the Taliban and died and asked these women not to send their young sons to join the ranks of the Taliban instead of their husbands because of economic poverty.
In August 2021, U.S. and NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan after twenty years of military and political control of the territory and of fighting the Taliban. The Taliban were able to regain control of the country. Initially, they claimed they had changed and sought dialogue with the international community. However, by March 2022, any possibility for change was shattered when the leadership banned girls from returning to secondary school, marking the start of a complete crackdown on women’s rights. Since then, the Taliban have imposed increasingly repressive policies, including bans on women’s education, employment, access to public spaces, and even NGO work. This has led to what many call a "gender apartheid" or “social feminicide.” Most Afghan women are now confined to their homes with no public role or future prospects, especially outside major cities like Kabul, where resistance is stronger but still severely crushed.
How did the return of the Taliban in 2021 affect you?
I already knew that if the Taliban returned to power, they would come back with modern tools: technology and media. I did not expect any fundamental change in their ideology. And when the Taliban came to power, they affected our work, they affected our education and we lost everything in one hour. They removed women from political engagement, from economic engagement, from social engagement. Yeah, I had a school and we taught Islam to girls, but in a peaceful way. Then the Taliban blocked our bank account, closed our company, which had, as I told you, 2500 people working. And now all of those people, they are unemployed. And those girls, they are at home. But now we have 130 secret classes in Afghanistan. They removed women from political engagement, from economic engagement, from social engagement. Now I'm in Norway, but I lost everything and I had to start everything from zero.
Afghanistan has a long history of women’s rights movements and modernization, especially throughout the 20th century. But in 1978, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, soon confronted with U.S.-backed Islamist groups, which had always been on the margins of politics. This internal war between the Soviet Army and Islamist groups was a proxis-conflict between the U.S. and the USSR, part of the Cold War. These groups gained momentum – especially after the fall of the USSR in 1989 – and destroyed decades of social improvement policies, especially for women. It is in this context that the Taliban gained momentum and rose to power in 1996, until 9/11, when the US violently invaded Afghanistan, triggering an internal war with the Taliban, as well as a new phase of externally supported modernization. Women re-entered schools, universities, and the workforce, and international NGOs invested in gender equality programs. However, this progress remained fragile and urban-centered.
Nazifa organized two national conferences in Kandahar and in Kabul where she asked women to struggle for their rights.
When the Taliban began gaining more ground and then taking control in the last few years, what were your initial thoughts and fears?
What I did not expect was the abandonment of Afghan women by the international community. I never imagined that the world, especially the powerful countries that claim to uphold human rights, would allow the Taliban to take power without fear, without any accountability. I thought that by now the world had changed and human rights had become a central, nonnegotiable value. But unfortunately, I was wrong. And of course, the Taliban did not come to power with war, but because the Americans left and signed an agreement in Doha with them. How can the US forget about the responsibilities, how can they forget about the kids in Afghanistan, how can they forget about the women of Afghanistan, how can they forget about the 14 million people living in Afghanistan? They use the Taliban because of their political benefits, because anytime the American government wants, they can use the Taliban against China, they can use the Taliban against Russia, they can use the Taliban against Iran. The international community allowed the Taliban to reclaim power despite their record of human rights abuses. The Taliban are ruling without any fear of consequences, and women are the first victims.
Nazifa working with the World Food Program in Afghanistan.
Think about Qatar. Qatar is an Islamic country and they know that the Taliban's actions are not Islamic (as an Islamic scholar I can say that), but they are supporting the Taliban. The Taliban are not an Islamic group, they cannot represent Islam, they are not fighting for Islam, they just abuse Islam. But the Taliban are living in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan, in different countries. Most of the Taliban and political leaders, their girls are university students. On the 8th of March last year, on the International Day of Women’s Rights, I had a meeting with Qatar's representative in Geneva, she's a woman and she told me that the Taliban, everything they are doing in Afghanistan is based on our culture and I should accept it. I told her, if you accept the Taliban, take it to your country, why send it to Afghanistan, why lobbying for them? Shame on you as an Islamic country, shame on you as a woman. I told her that the Taliban are not the reality of my society. I'm the reality of Afghanistan. The other youth, a new generation, that is the reality of Afghanistan. The women of Afghanistan, they are the reality of Afghanistan, not the Taliban. If it's the reality for you, take it to your country. If you can research about the past 50 or 60 years ago in Afghanistan, it was a developed country. Yeah, it was very developed, very educated people. The reason why I'm interested to talking about these realities, especially to students, is because I think the new generation, the youth, the students, they should think about international politics because extremism can spread worldwide. They should talk with their politicians. They should never allow the politicians to play with them, to play with their life, to play with their country, to play with their values that the politicians of Afghanistan, they played and now the powerful countries, they're dealing with the Taliban indirectly. They're sending money to Afghanistan in the name of humanitarian aid, but there is no accountability mechanism. The UN has 1000 like dozens of projects, but no mechanism to control them and to ensure that humanitarian aid goes to the Afghan population.
Do you think that there is a big difference in the new generation's resistance compared to the one of when the Taliban first came?
Yes, there is a big difference, because the new generation from the past 20 years experienced peace and freedom of expression. And now those working with us are telling me “Nazifa, of course you are in Norway, you're thinking about us, but we don't think about our life. It's our struggle, and we should be committed, we should work. We should remove the fear like you did.” I experienced 3 times the attack of the Taliban, and I know I don't have any fear for the Taliban. The new generation doesn’t fear the Taliban. Of course, when I'm telling you that we had peace in the past years, it doesn't mean that we had complete peace, because there was interior war between the Taliban and the previous government. Growing up in a country torn apart by war, shifting regimes and a culture of violence, I was forced to witness the deepening of inequality and the marginalization of women and minorities. But we had a little bit of peace and girls had access to schools and freedom of expression, nobody would stop them. And now, for example, the Taliban are saying that in Afghanistan there is no war, but that does not mean we have peace. Peace has different definitions. Yes, there is no war, but they are torturing the people. Yes, there is no war, but they are arresting the people. There is no war, but they are beating the people. There is no war but they restricted people from everything. Peace begins in our minds, in our bodies. If we cannot feel peace within ourselves—within our minds, bodies, and lives—then we do not truly have peace. Over the past 20 years, Afghanistan experienced war, but we still had hope. And for the new generation, that hope was even more powerful than peace itself. Today, the Taliban have extinguished the light of that hope. But they should remember: even if they try to turn off our lights of hope, we have the strength to reignite them through our struggle. We will work harder than before to keep that hope alive in our souls
Officially, no country has officially recognized the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan, but do you think that the Taliban are perceived by the international community as the head of the country?
It is very difficult to talk about the recognition of the Taliban. The Taliban are happy that the international community didn't recognize them, because if it did, they would have to answer to them, they would be accountable. Today they're doing everything that they want, and indirectly the powerful countries are playing, they don't care about their commitments. During the Oslo talks, I challenged the Taliban under light of Islam, Quran and Hadith. But they just left. They left, they played with words. They say, we need recognition from the international community, but indirectly some of the countries are dealing with them. See, China has economic contracts. The Chinese government doesn’t think about the women of Afghanistan. Because of the problem between Iran and the USA, and because of water issues, Iran wants to save their friendship with the Taliban.
What does your day-to-day life look like as a human rights defender?
It's too hard. I don't have a personal life. My thoughts, my vision, my mission, everything, everything is Afghanistan. The situation, the women of Afghanistan, the new generation of Afghanistan. When you decide to be a human rights defender in a country like Afghanistan, the international community leaves you alone. The powerful countries leave you alone. And the Taliban publish a new restriction everyday on your sisters and mothers in Afghanistan. Plus, Norway, for example, as a human rights defender, I should work, but I should pay the rent of my house. So I have to work in another place as well. In 24 hours I usually sleep four or five hours. I need time, I need rest, I need opportunities, I need resources. I need everything to struggle for my rights and stand for Afghan women, stand for my country, stand for human rights. It takes everything from you sometimes. I'm very young, but sometimes I think that I'm 127 years old because I experienced 3 times the Taliban's attacks. And that's too much because in my body and in my mind I see the traces of those attacks. I will never forget those accidents. I will never forget about those bad days, the dark days when I lost my friends. And sometimes I feel very hopeless because some of my friends are in Afghanistan and in jail, and I cannot do anything. When I go to bed, do you think that I am relaxed? No, because I'm thinking about my friends, about my colleagues. They are my family members. It’s too hard, but you know, ultimately you feel strong and you have the world in your hands, because you have a good heart, a good mind, you are a person who is helping others. You're a person standing for others' rights.
It's hard to listen to Nazifa's story, but it’s so important. As students in Maastricht, we have the privilege to question, to learn, and to impact foreign policies and international strategy of our countries towards Afghanistan. It's not about speaking for Nazifa and her sisters, but rather of using our privilege to amplify her voice, their voices. So talk about it. Share her story with your loved ones. Come meet her at her conference on June 5 at the university. Ask your questions. It's time to show her that she's not alone.
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