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When she landed in Paris on a flight from Kabul in the summer of 2021, Farzana Farazo vowed never to give up her feminist fight for Afghanistan, even in exile.
But a year later, she admits to feeling “frustrated”.
Like many activists who fled Afghanistan, her hopes for the future quickly became mired in a process of integration fraught with obstacles.
AFP reporters met former police officer Farazzo for the first time a few days after arriving in France. At the time, her belief in fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan drove her.
She is convinced she can hold on from afar, having fled with her life after the Taliban’s stunning capture of Kabul and the expulsion of the country’s Western-backed leaders.
In the 20 years between Taliban rule, girls were allowed to go to school and women were able to work in all sectors – although progress on women’s rights has been largely confined to urban centres in this deeply conservative country.
Also read | How Afghans fear being tracked by the Taliban through their digital data
For Farazoo, staying in Afghanistan meant a double threat to her security – which put her on a priority list for evacuation.
As a police officer, she faced retaliation from Taliban fighters long pursued by the government. She is also a member of the Hazara minority, persecuted for being Shiite in the Sunni-majority country.
Falazzo, who now lives at the home of a charity worker near Paris, says she has lost the energy she had when she first arrived in France. For months, she said, she could barely sleep at night.
“To be honest, I’m not particularly active,” the 29-year-old said. “First because I don’t speak French well enough, but also because the approach to activism is different. Here, people talk a lot.”
Also read | Torture and Abuse of Women Against Taliban Restrictions: Amnesty Report
For the past year, she has taken French classes, met regularly with social workers, and is now awaiting approval for her own housing.
“I had a lot of difficulties,” she said.
“It’s hard to focus when you’re not feeling well,” she adds. “Like so many others, I’m independent in Afghanistan. I have a job, I’m educated. So having nothing in France makes things difficult, and it drives you into depression.”
– ‘From scratch’ –
Didier Leschi, head of the French Immigration and Integration Authority, said the integration journey was a long and difficult process for new activists, and a year was not enough.
“But because of their culture and professional networks, they get more help than other Afghans who rely solely on the government,” he said.
Mursal Sayas, a journalist and feminist activist, said she was “lucky” when a publisher asked her to write a book about women in Afghanistan.
“We have lost everything, our country, our freedom, our achievements,” she said. “We’re suddenly pushed into a country that has to start from scratch.”
But Sayas said she knew she and her compatriots in exile “have freedom of speech, which girls in Afghanistan don’t,” which she said gave “a responsibility to us to keep campaigning” and “denounce injustice, inequality, apartheid” against women”.
In the first months after the Taliban took over, Afghan women organized demonstrations.
But such rallies have become rare after many demonstrators were arrested and beaten in prison, according to eyewitness testimony collected by Amnesty International.
A woman in Kabul, who did not want to be named, told AFP that the women who fled Afghanistan “are a source of positive energy for us”. “We know they won’t forget the women of Afghanistan.”
– ‘feel the pain’ –
In hindsight, did Sayas make the right choice to leave her country?
“Every morning I wake up feeling the pain of not being able to be with my loved ones,” she replied. “But it would be worse if I was captured by the Taliban and never spoke to my sisters again.”
As if it was not enough to leave their homeland and face integration problems, these women also found that they were considered less valuable in their new country than in their homeland.
“I’m in an identity crisis,” said Rada Akbar, a graphic artist who arrived in France a year ago.
“It takes time to process and I can’t become a new guy overnight,” said the 34-year-old, who wanted to highlight the “invisible loss” of Afghan culture under the Taliban.
She said the struggle continued despite her dream turning into a “nightmare”. The French government has flown 4,340 people from Afghanistan to France since August 2021, according to the interior ministry.
A department official said the evacuation was underway “to protect Afghans who are particularly threatened”.
According to OFPRA, the country’s refugee agency, more than 13,000 Afghans in France – including those who are self-reliant – have applied for asylum by 2021.
But NGOs say lingering red tape has made it difficult not only for individual refugees to reach France, but also for their families to follow – with potentially thousands waiting for their loved ones to get French visas.
“It really should be a very simple process, but the authorities have very strict requirements for proof of family links and birth certificates, and the Afghan authorities cannot always provide these,” Safe’s lawyer Salome Cohen said. Channel Charity.
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