 Hi everyone and welcome to the last of our three panels in our symposium on Afghanistan. Our symposium is aiding the fundraising efforts led by the Tufts Association of South Asians to raise money for the International Rescue Committee and International Medical Corps. We will put instructions on how you can best do that in the chat. Today we will be discussing the impacts of Taliban control on women in Afghanistan. We are very excited to welcome the four incredible women you see this afternoon who have each done work on the topic and will be able to offer their unique experiences. Before we begin however we do want to acknowledge that we were planning to have a fifth speaker today from Afghanistan. Unfortunately she had to return to the refugee camp she's staying in due to her baby sister's lab report and regretted informing us that she could not join today because of the camp's Wi-Fi weakness and not being able to get a stronger connection from any Marines due to security concerns. So I'm now going to introduce the four panelists we have here today. Lima Ahmed is a PhD candidate in the fields of international security and human security at the Fletcher School of Tufts University. Her research focuses on youth and their vulnerabilities to extreme violence. She founded the Paiwand Afghan Association that focuses on research regarding women's issues. She has worked with government and international partners in Afghanistan for the past 20 years at different capacities. Ms. Ahmed is an independent researcher with three search reports published, Women's Penal System in Afghanistan, Women's Participation in Peace Process of Afghanistan, and NATO as a Security Sector Reform Organization, and several analytical articles. Tahira Hidayati is a journalist from Afghanistan. In Kabul she worked at Super Kabul Daily newspaper and ran a column named What Taliban Did to the People. For that column, she interviewed people who lived under the Taliban's rule and wrote and published their stories. She left Afghanistan and relocated to the US after the Taliban released a statement threatening journalists to wrote against them. After the Taliban took over the country, Tahira helped organize an evacuation effort to help 250 Afghans, including female martial artists, singers, women's rights activists, and other at-risk Afghans, leave the country and resettle in Canada. Tahira is currently attending college in California, studying bioengineering. Rafia Zakaria is the author of Against White Feminism, The Upstairs Wife and Intimate History of Pakistan, Vale, and many essays for The Guardian, CNN, and The New York Times Book Review. She is a regular columnist for Dawn in Pakistan and The Baffler in the United States. And Anna Larson is a lecturer in political science at Tufts University and a research associate in the Department of Development Studies at SLAS University of London. She has conducted research on democratization, elections, and gender in Afghanistan since 2004, and formerly worked in Kabul for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. She has a PhD in post-war recovery from the University of York, and her book, Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan, co-authored with Noah Coburn, was published by Columbia University Press in 2014. Thank you for joining us, and if you have any questions throughout the panel, please send them in the Q&A box to be answered at the end of the discussion. I will now pass it on to our moderator for today's panel, Alex Dingle, who is a sophomore majoring in international relations and on the board of Tufts Middle East Research Group. Thank you so much, Emily, for introducing our panel and panelists, and we're going to begin with a brief opening statement from each of our panelists. So, Lima, if we could begin with you. Thank you, Emily and Alex for having me today here. I had such an emotional morning this today, because one of my friends who was stuck in Kabul for the past one month, I just got the news that she was able to get out, so I completely forgot what to say, but it was for the one month or three and a half weeks, we were trying to take her out. She was one of the women at high risks. So, for my opening statement, I would just talk about three different points that you might have heard other panelists also in the past that impact of Taliban controls over Afghan women. There are immediate impacts that we see it in the media. Girls are not allowed to school, women are not allowed to work, and life has been just stopped, so it's not impact on women only, but the entire country has just on this deadlock kind of pause. And one point that I want to discuss that this impact, the impact that we talk about, it goes beyond just the Taliban control, but it goes to how we have made this Afghan woman as a political tool rather than Afghan women as a real human being to be used for different kind of political and political economic kind of leverage or bargaining, so to say. Afghan women today, Afghan women's reality today is quite different than what we see as a name Afghan woman. The international community for the past 20 years have used this terminology or political terminologies to justify their aid programs in Afghanistan, their occupation of the country were there and any projects or any programs that was implemented in Afghanistan by the name of Afghan women. And today that has been transformed to another group, which is Taliban, as some people call it, the uprising group in the country, but most Afghanistan who I include myself into that, we just see them a terrorist project. They also are bargaining now on Afghan women, now with the UN or international community that if I'm allowed to sit on the UN General Assembly, I will give this and this a right start, GAN women. If I am recognized or my government is given legitimacy internationally, I will give one or two or three rights to Afghan women. So in my opinion, Afghan women in reality is quite far from the narrative that we all together have built surrounding what Afghan women really means there are Afghan women, all this one group of human beings that have equal voice, equal needs and equal political demands and way of living and with the agency or it is just something that we a bullet point at the international settings or at the political sitting to be checkmarked about do we say that Afghan women have agency to do something about it or we are asking we should do something for Afghan women. So these are the questions that I am looking forward to discuss with my fellow panelists and also some other fellow students who might have questions that what are their opinion about this thing that we always hear this terminology Afghan women. Do we put human beings in that category or this is more now a political terminology that we are using. Thank you. Thank you so much. Tahira, if we could go to you next. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for your story for organizing this event and thank you for making me just have a voice here to talk about it. You also mentioned it for the last month and maybe for the last 40 days. Almost 40 days since Cobbleville. I have been a part of an evacuation effort for taking mostly like girls and their families that who are at risk and some other like female activists or singers and martial artists and even some female students out and we secured them luckily Canadian visa our first group or our first 26 they are already settled in Canada and our second group they just like one week ago they could get out and they are now in Pakistan and waiting to get processed. One of the things I mean it was the thing that for the last 39 days or 40 days I've been more focused on that and I've been busy with that or I've been doing it and after that now that we are trying to organize a second evacuation. We have like very limited visa or funding and everything and it's getting difficult because we have a long list and have to choose between them how to choose that who is more deserving what woman you should take out first and we have to go through that judgment of thinking about it that okay this person is a very like a young female student a hard working student from a very like that comes from a very difficult background but on the other hand the person who we have to compare them together is an activist a female activist who put like her life at risk and like making that decision making the judgment or thinking about it that okay this person she was very helpful but like she has her entire family and they are not going to leave like just the woman is not going to leave them behind and they are going to take like take seven spots so we can we could like save I don't know seven other single women who are at higher risk just going through that judgment and thinking about it that who you should save and who is more deserving when Afghanistan is not safe for anyone and it's not safe for any woman at all and that risk level is getting higher and higher the first thing they are in Afghanistan after that being the woman after that being a single woman after that being in a single outstoken woman in Afghanistan and at the same time like hearing horrible news from back home right now most of the focus is on Kabul the media into the country is on Kabul but what's going on in other provinces like the girl's name being like recorded and gathered by these like local people through mosques and everything and fear that we have had like mom's mothers reaching out to us and saying that okay I don't have my husband I lost him like years ago I just have this one daughter she's for example 15 or 16 just take her out wherever you can I just don't want and it's it's most like what we are I'm personally thinking and feeling and I'm I'm looking forward to discuss just being a voice for those women who right now in this audience who are here they can hear it and maybe if there can be anything at least knowing about them knowing that what's going on there thank you so much Rafia if we could go with you next you know I completely agree with Tahira and Nima you know particularly with the sentiment that Afghan women have been made into a political bargaining chip I don't think it's really possible to talk about what Afghan women are undergoing under the Taliban without also talking about what the US NATO presence how the US NATO presence and American feminists in general you know used Afghan women as a means to both burnish their own feminist credentials you know to look at to appear as the white feminist saviors of these poor downtrodden women but also of course by the American state that wanted you know a nice packaging for a strategic war and occupation and you know they fell upon they fell upon Afghan women it's important to remember that feminist majority was carrying out a program called and gender apartheid in Afghanistan in the 1990s prior to 9 11 and prior to the invasion and that once once the invasion happened or you know if it was going to happen the leaders of feminist majority were present when Colin Powell announced the invasion and were in consultation with the Bush administration in those early days of the invasion and I mentioned that because I think it's important to note that within the American political landscape the war in Afghanistan particularly this quote unquote liberating Afghan women was you know what was very much a project that you know that they that they felt was going to yield dividends in terms of American national reputation so you know so there is an intentional you know the the contrast you see between the Taliban and you know the aid economy that was created by the United States you know illustrates in many ways how Afghan women have always been given you know two terrible choices so on one hand is you know the obscurantism and oppression inflicted by the Taliban on the other hand is this aid economy that is essentially furnished by various aid organizations and various countries to follow the line of we're doing something good over there of course now all the lies have been exposed I think the two speakers did an excellent job of pointing out exactly how dire and how absolutely heart-rending and devastating the situation is but even in this situation it it should be remembered that for instance you know the money Afghanistan's reserves are still frozen here in the United States so that even those Afghan women who are left there who are government workers or whose husbands are government workers are they're not able to be paid and you know the there's also talk of increasing sanctions on that government which I mean I understand in terms of you know opposition to the Taliban but I think also need to be evaluated in terms of the impact they are going to have on ordinary Afghans so yeah I mean I think that this situation where exit is just about the only hope or choice offered to Afghan women is a consequence of what was done and not done in the 20 years of US NATO occupation. Thank you so much Professor Larson if we could end with you. Sure first of all let me say how privileged I feel to be here on the same panel as Neema Tahira and Rafia it's a real honor to be here with you and I'm involved in a constant struggle to rid myself of my west-centric and Eurocentric bias it's difficult something that's hard to shed but at least to acknowledge that all the time I think is really important and I'd always defer to you particularly to Neema and Tahira with your very current experience and knowledge and so thank you very much for your incredible perspectives and to Rafia too you know and just thank you for the work that you're doing at the moment I think it's critically important and so I just wanted to start with that and also I don't want to take too much time but just to echo what's been said already absolutely women have been used as a political tool as part of the political narrative of bargaining chip not only now not only recently but since when I don't know since at least the Russians if not before then and so this is a constant theme that comes up again again women's rights women's freedoms being used as a bargaining chip so thank you Neema for highlighting that important point and then I was just going to add on to Rafia's point as well about the the occupation that the intervention in Afghanistan and how it's very tempting at this point particularly given the apparent swift nature of the change to Taliban rule to make a distinction or a very stark distinction between now and you know three months ago and that the period of the intervention versus the period of Taliban rule where as I think Rafia was pointing out there are many similarities many continuities that need to be pointed out for example Fahundan Malixada was abducted was was was just mobbed lynched in Kabul in 2015 in broad daylight that's under Ashraf Ghani's government we need to not forget that there is there has been an incredible struggle that women have lived through in Afghanistan for a really long time and I absolutely echo what Rafia was saying there's a hypocrisy of the the western narratives that come in pretending to be saviors in 2004 when the women who stood up at the lawyer-georgia tent against warlords had been struggling under under horrendous circumstances under the Mujahideen government and before and were sort of the bravest women you could ever meet and yet were portrayed as these these helpless victims that needed the west so I feel like I have had the privilege to meet and work with incredible people in Afghanistan incredibly brave people whose women and men whose efforts I feel go overlooked a lot and I would like to just make mention of their work because I was very privileged to have the opportunity to work with thank you so much professor Larson now we're going to get started into the questions and then we will leave some time at the end so again if anyone has questions please feel free to put them in the q&a so as many of you mentioned in your opening statements afghan women have long been used as political tools or political bargaining chips one of the major reasons american administrations from bush to biden have given to justify the occupation of afghanistan was advocating for their rights how much did the rights of afghan women actually shift over the course of the american occupation of afghanistan lima yes please feel free to speak I would just add to that that even that question the framing of this question is where I have problem with because this brings afghan women as a as a someone or people or a population that needed help the country was divided between men and women and afghan women had to be saved you heard tyra tyra is one of the very few like very few afghan women that I am even aware that since this fall of the Kabul have been working day and night taking afghan women or people students women out because that's not that we want it if there is no other choice between life and death if afghan women are asked to what is the solution the solution is not to take the entire 15 million women out because there is the situation right now is not suitable for any woman as tyra mentioned my own family is right now in the camp shuttered around the world I have helped more than 500 people out so if that is seen as a power or as a person with agency afghan women always had agency during the Taliban time they were great running schools and businesses in in the basements isn't that seen as a power but if we say power as a what we see in the west what power is and that is given to afghan women with the with the aid money that's I think that's kind of limiting the understanding of what we are calling the rights and the aid money yes it provided economy to the country it provided opportunities for educations and it made it a little bit easier but it made it also difficult for women and tyra and myself because right now we won't believe it we are not given platforms because we are considered not to be the real afghan women because we are educated so we are considered the elite afghan women or the diaspora afghan women and because we got education through aid money or through that so now we they are not giving platform even for publication the real afghan women who are victim who get bitten those has to come and say things when they start saying things and then again they are safe somebody is behind them that they are able to protest now but in Kabul we saw in previous weeks that young girl from generation z they were all on the streets they never knew how Taliban violence was so they were facing them even in my generation of women would have not been so still you see in the western media that these women might have been supported by some other kind of force that they didn't have agency so the aid money or the 20 past 20 years in afghanistan was i don't think it was the aid money that gave afghan women rights but it was more the freedom the country that it deserved was allowed where afghan women were themselves doing stuff i don't think so anybody was particularly behind them what they were doing even before the fall of the the the Kabul for the past one year i think afghan women were the sole agent of denying whatever that was happening they were the biggest lobbyist saying that the agreement with the Taliban and and the US is wrong what will what the consequences of this agreement will be and how the pull out of the US withdrawal will result in afghan women never advocated in my opinion that occupation has to stay in afghanistan forever but they always want caution the world that how how it should be done this has to be led by afghans how this process has to be done how the power transfer has to be done there has to be a say that is given to women that they come and say like how you do it so in my opinion it is really limiting afghan women agency to say that the past 20 years have given afghan women rights no the country was in civil war that civil war was stopped there is everything was forming as a society in afghan women were part of that society also followed by that i would say that even if we think that there was like us effort on men and women in afghanistan if we want to just like talk about that gender part i do believe like whatever that usb or us says that maybe it was in major cities like but how many major cities like even not in all of them for example in four or five more famous cities like mazhar sherry for Kabul or herat but like the majority of people the majority of women who were under a lot of like they had a lot of problems and their rights were not given to them they were not in these big cities they were in like villages they were in tribal lands they and i i really don't think that there was a big impact even in terms of like those freedoms for them for for going to school we had like this province i forgot that right now but last year it was the first year that they had girls graduating from high school and that maybe there was a lot of projects on funding for for woman but i just feel like i personally don't think there was a lot of impact on that way and not only in that part even with the evacuation that happened as lima jan mentioned it's as an afghan woman i personally did not expect us to stay in afghanistan forever it's more about have they left the country and even in those evacuation that's like us is saying that they did evacuate 120 000 afghans who did they evacuate and among them have many women are there how many of them we we can't see like photos of women being in dc's airport with burqas and or like i've heard it from a friend of mine who was in a camp that a woman was bitten up by her husband in a us camp in dc it's like even people who us got evacuated if it's if it was about woman that woman right is just not being respected inside us so have they are claiming that they did it in afghanistan maybe i can also add just to that that observation just that i think when we're asking sort of about the impact of the american intervention or the international intervention in afghanistan over 20 years we're kind of imagining that that intervention is neutral or that it's if not neutral then positive and you know i mean those are very loaded terms but i mean we were fighting a war and i think you have to remember that in war there are um measures that are taken maybe for expediency's sake maybe because americans and international forces are beholden first and foremost to their own citizens not to afghans that you know there are measures that are taken that will make things very difficult for civilians on the ground and will worsen gender conflicts will worsen um situations for women just because it's part of a war so for example you're giving fuel to um expect to anti-west groups and to the groups who want to see afghanistan rid of foreign invaders you're giving fuel to them all the time every time a difficult decision is made about needing to uh target a certain civilian area because there are insurgents there or needing to do night raids or needing to to conduct warfare because it is warfare right um these are difficult decisions that are that are made all the time and yet they give fuel to those anti-west sentiments they um encourage sort of an anti-democracy anti-freedom sort of stance i think um and and can make things very difficult for for women so i think we just we need to remember that this 20-year intervention if you want to call it an intervention um it's not a neutral one and had a lot of impact purely you know by its very existence um and we need to we need to remember that i think i'd like to add that i mean not only was it not neutral it's devastating i mean even while this was happening there was a drone strike which killed 10 civilians and the american general uh just kind of stood there and said sorry you know we thought there were ISIS so we bombed them but of course that family is left with you know dealing with that carnage i think that it's fair to say that the value of afghan women to the western narrative which very much is not only uh pretends to be neutral but actually pretends to be good you know like the good guys and i think that their their value to that narrative uh existed when they were using them to justify the occupation of Afghanistan and as soon as you know they were no longer interested um and were like okay well you know we're done here we don't really like want to be out there doing this this stuff in Afghanistan anymore they they packed up and they left with absolutely no regard of what they were leaving behind and now you have these piecemeal refugee efforts but you know what sort of country are you bringing these have gone refugees to you're bringing them into extremely islamophobic uh you know uh country that you know where at least half think all muslims are terrorists so i mean i think that um this idea that um you know if if people can take away one thing from from here they should be disabused of the fact that you know the white and western people who went out there essentially to get revenge for 9-11 were somehow carrying out this benevolent and altruistic effort over there i don't think that was the case at all i think that there was a strategic interest in having a presence in south asia and uh this was looked at it as a good way uh to package that and it was packaged very effectively to the extent that even you know whatever three weeks ago when this um withdrawal was happening it was all still focused on these ridiculous and reductionist uh theatricals where you know you have a blonde white sienna and anchor putting on a burqa and cabel and standing at the burqa shop and you know using these um these stereotypes that you would think that in 20 years uh would not exist anymore and so you know when you have waste at such a immense level right i mean just even the promote program that usa id ran wasted 400 million dollars like the special inspector general has said us a cannot account for that money nobody knows very well and you know when you have when you see something like that you can only impute that you know the act breaking about actual meaningful change and creating political capacity among afghan women um facilitating not what you know white westerners thought they should do but what they actually wanted to do i mean there is no effort in that and it can you know it can only be intentional uh when you see numbers like 400 million dollars uh you know uh who that are just like nobody knows where they are thank you and going off of some of your points many in the west have heavily focused on the burqa when discussing afghanistan especially in the media however the revolutionary association of women in afghanistan has said removing the burqa is quote in no way an indication of women's rights and liberties and quote why do you think that there is such an emphasis on this garment and how does this conversation take away from listening to the voices and needs of afghan women rafia we can begin with you and then um whoever else wants to speak um you know i think my you know as i was saying i think that the burqa is taken as a convenience stereotype in which you know there's like a visible you know there's there's political theater in the burqa and everybody uses it whether uh you know it's the taliban who want to come in and force everyone to wear it or you know the americans that want to say oh my god so many rights for women in qabu they're roaming around without a burqa i mean either way it's a problem and you know the meaning of these garments is deeply contextual i mean in in you know in pakistan sometimes when you're going to a crowded market out wear one simply for the reason that it provides a degree of physical like security in spaces that are dominated by men you know in a country where public space is still very dominated by men so i think that this emphasis on the burqa and it honestly makes me sick to my stomach because there was even a congresswoman caroline maloney who actually did the first whole theater on the floor of the congress where she put on a burqa and then she talked about how oppressive it was and and then she took it off and that was the reason to invade afghanistan in 2001 and you know she appeared again wearing a burqa at the metgala this two weeks ago so it it's become very sickening to me um how this uh garment is you know there's no effort to really understand what it means contextually and the complexity of what it might mean for different afghan women as you must have said of you know who are not a monolith who don't all believe the same thing um and it's become this sort of um you know almost like a a pop culture slash a white woman self-congratulation uh element that oh my god you know look you don't have to wear these things so we're so liberated i think it's it's just an absolutely absurd idea and the fact that we see it repeated again and again after 20 years honestly just really depresses and disappoints me i would um just add to what uh rafia has already said i will give you a few statistics um before um my point um i had the research done in 2019 giving you some numbers on the the terminologies that we know like the afghan national police in army we had 4500 uh women there for afghan doctors we had 4600 doctors um practicing doctors we had 101 university students in the main cities these statistics statistics were like taken from the main cities not even um big small provinces or districts uh 3000 approximately 3000 university professors and um six hundred six 60 000 female teachers in afghan schools 3 million 0.5 afghan female students and there are female servants working 85 000 women 800 women run businesses with 1700 businesses we really hear about these statistics about afghan women what we hear is just a clocking afghan woman agency is just limited um i would just give you like a matter for if somebody is discussing um a hoodie or any kind of fashion that in the west is where that every day that is the only identity being discussed about the freedom or not freedom of uh american women european women or other women around the world but afghan women is just seen that oh if this clothing is off and off that is like the right state they own burqa or any kind of clothing is a choice and should be considered a choice when i say afghan women have been dealt as a political tool that's why their choice is also also not not their own their agency is taken from them i in my family my mother-in-law choose to wear burqa until yesterday with the 20 years of freedom that was given to afghan women she chose and the daughter-in-law or her daughters are not wearing it so there are clothing we we can go in the history why these clothing came to being when we want to find out but just being afghan women only limited to the her clothing and not having a choice like even in afghanistan for the past 20 years we didn't have a law where there was a law that would impose clothing on women it was a choice of course and as uh rafia mentioned that in male-dominative societies women need to secure themselves either it is clothing whatever you take it so you would choose stuff that you feel protected by but it was never imposed but i'm sure all of you might have seen it in the media where the taliban show of women where kim kardish and also put on that kind of a show in mit gala that when women their eyes are not even um uh you can't see their eyes their hands are covered and everything that was again a main like a covered issue in the western media where you saw that this is what taliban would do about their clothing it could be a choice but why we are not discussing male clothing anywhere in the world even if it is an oppressed society like afghanistan or if it is any advanced country in the world so the issue where i see is that politicization of women bodies and in my country is going back to how on the surface we look at issues how we undermine what women on the ground really are doing rather than just what other people are talking about i think there were so many my afghan friends where we were mad about the point where rafia has mentioned that the moment taliban took over the Kabul we saw all these western journalists wearing all these abayas and and hijabs and stuff for me my thing was you are doing this so they can impose it on me too taliban will never go after a western journalist that why you are not wearing each other so why you are doing it and making it a kind of rule for me to also follow so there were there are many things where we think we are helping afghanistan or afghan women but when you don't include afghan women voices into your help that is where the flaw comes because that is where you create this hierarchy that i know so i'm going to help you the way i think i'm going to help you rather than asking them how they want to be helped which kind of support they need from the world i also i think i totally agree with what lema and rafia mentioned but i think maybe at the beginning just that burqa was assembled to show like i don't know saying that it's like a cage or restrictions that women had to follow and slowly it has become something that something that looked more interesting and could have more audience and could be more attractive for media to say like wow this is the situation that afghan women are living under that and in the like protest that happens or most of the things when when it's about taliban in the media the photos that they try to advertise through them it's more focused on that burqa in a state of i don't know a lot of other rights that they are losing like their education rights their work and even having a voice to speak out the forced marriages that people are scared and like they are gathering lists and all these things it's more about like just focusing on that one thing that was supposed to be a symbol of the cage that they might be there not might they are there or but they have to deal with it and burqa is like the way that lima mentioned it it's a choice for a big group of afghan women people who are living in like more male dominated provinces or like in provinces that are even like for i've worked a burqa when i didn't want to be recognized for my own safety and it's it's not like i'm against that i don't like support it but i said it's not everyone who wears burqa they are like and there are a lot of pressure and they are that poor afghan woman who needs this pity there are a lot of other things that as an afghan woman i do expect like countries or communities that they are they claim they are fighting for afghan women's right or for women's right to think about them and mention them instead of just saying that okay there is this necessary kind of a job for women they are losing their education they are losing their livelihood they can't go out even like with those women are scared of their life being forcefully married to a Taliban member and i i just feel like wearing a burqa is a big problem for me but maybe it's not a problem for i don't know a woman in a village in the west or in the south but being forcefully married to a Taliban member to a terrorist it's a problem for all of afghan women who are in that situation not being able to go to school not being able to learn how to read how to rise and never becoming independent financially never having a job just being that like wife that they expect you to be it's just i don't say no one talks about them they do but it's not enough and it's more about like to me it sounds that maybe they are more looking to find like audience and make their own topics very hot instead of really doing what maybe they are claiming that it's their values or it's what they are working for thank you so much i just wanted to open up the floor to some of the audience questions and so one question we have is what are ways that our audience members today can support afghan women it's short just i think afghan women need platforms they should be seen as allies rather than subjects wherever you have a platform where you could have a hear to listen to i think if all of you are following afghan or you are interested in issues in afghanistan you might have seen in social media and the biggest compiler are women right now whatever issue is raised you would see a lot of twitter handlers a lot of like any social media you see women are up there they are they are in the camps they are in afghanistan they are cooking for their children they are fearful for their lives but they still have this time to say that i'm going to speak up so in my opinion understanding that is the biggest support i think anyone in the world can give and also try to not only understand yourself but advocate on behalf of them why is it not a question for any one of us living in peaceful countries that what we know of the human rights violation we are not okay we have you and we have all these global governance kind of organizations but everything in the books that we are see we have acknowledged them as a human rights violation that is happening in afghanistan but we still go about our lives we still don't see that as a threat to humanity we still things like oh that is a really tribal far away stone age country so they cannot be fixed i think afghans are not or afghan women are not expecting that they need to be fixed we just want to be recognized as a fellow human beings and and when for me it was really shocking that the UN Security Council went on a break for a long weekend when hundreds of people were dying like we every night i get calls a girl on the run that she will be forcefully meted or people being killed in provinces in any kind of way and these are not hidden from the UN we report to them we shout out to them and the world is quite so for me it is like why it is still okay by us like we all human beings we get we know about it like american students right now they know what is happening about afghanistan and and everyone they're not only women why we just think it's okay are there any social media handles or organizations that you recommend donating to or new sources where we can learn from just combining some questions that have also come up now from audience members is this question specifically for me you can begin but whoever also would like to chime in would be happy to hear from as many of you i mean they can start by just going on twitter and write afghanistan there will be a maze to see how much afghans are right now and explaining the situation putting everything they could up there so the world could see it and i think that's making us so the energy makes so drain that whatever we are saying whatever tools we are using still the world is blind like they just don't see it so i think it won't be much difficult to find out what is happening in afghanistan okay go ahead i think that you know these sort of immediate things like learning more about this issue and supporting afghans are important but i think it's also important on a larger framework um to to understand and and and and be very suspicious of um you know future strategic efforts that um essentially take you know i mean i think that women's rights in afghanistan the issue of women's rights in reality has been so delegitimized now because you know foreigners westerners used it for their own purposes so it's important to remember that not only did things not get better things actually got worse but on a larger scale it's you know there are 15 large transnational humanitarian aid organizations um that that provide aid humanitarian aid in the world and in those 15 organizations of the boards of these organizations only 2 percent of the boards of these organizations even belong to a country that has seen a humanitarian crisis or um you know or or essentially needs has ever needed assistance so this means that you know 98 percent of the people are white and western and they're making all the decisions about you know how humanitarian aid is going to be dispersed what form you know what metrics whatever and that is a grave and important problem that american students in the west need to work on because until aid remains as white as it is these problems are going to be repeated because as you heard the people who need the help the people who are on the ground who are um you know who know what has to be done and what they need to get things done uh are not being listened to their reach is not far enough you know they're kept they are told to tell their sad stories but then you know white people come in and they make all the policy decisions and sit on all the boards and you know dictate the discourse so I think that that is something that you know american western students who are globally engaged need to be aware of and need to work against um you know this this sort of divide where all the you know aid dispersing decisions are made by white people and black and brown people are the people who are you know bombed in who are the people who are given the aid also following by like when they asked how to help afghan woman i i do believe that not all the afghan women we are talking about are women who are left in the in the country even a big group of them who got evacuated who are not all of them are educated not all of them are from not all of them have like those freedoms and the culture that they have grown in the families they've grown in they are they they still look at themselves the people who they were back home in afghanistan in their families with their husbands and maybe one of the things that i i'm not still sure about the ways that for example health could be in other except like knowing about them and trying to be a voice for them like direct help or immediate help right now in afghanistan organizations that they can help with that but i was thinking that one one way that people can help in the u.s is help those women who are just who just got here to the hotel in the u.s to get an education help them like get to universities help to provide them therapy sessions because all of them have been going through traumas when most of them like for a big part of their lives not only during this withdrawal or like helping them get a job for them to feel like what it means to be independent with the hope that maybe the next generation after that after them will be a different generation they will like they will have different daughters and also i'm not still sure but the team that i'm working with for a vacation we are looking and trying to find ways for helping woman education for longer term or another aspect i don't know if there is any way that i could reach out to you when we have the plan or oh yeah can i just add to sort of that point that here i made supporting women who are already here supporting afghan families who are already in the u.s one way a practical thing that we can do i believe is to write to our senators write to our legislators to push for temporary protected status to be assigned to afghanistan so this is a status that would allow afghans regardless of their ability to prove their individual persecuted status as refugees to stay longer in the united states as long as there seem to be a credible incredibly violent and difficult situation in afghanistan and so write to your senators i have done that and received positive responses it's it's a good thing to be able to do just on a sort of on a policy level and the other thing is to continue to try i don't know how to do this really on an individual basis but to put pressure on neighboring countries as well i've been trying to help a family in north of afghanistan to to get out to as bekistan and the administrative barriers that have been put up on all the borders have been so ridiculous like these countries pakistan india as bekistan they're advertising these humanitarian emergency visas and they're not granting any makes them look good to to advertise them but they're very slow in their administrative process and surely the most basic like acknowledgement of somebody's human rights and dignity is to give them the choice of whether or not to be able to stay or to leave and people are not able to get across borders by themselves they need to be able to make that choice so i just put that out there if there's any pressure that can be put on neighboring countries to um to at least allow people to apply for visas even if not to grant them please allow them to apply um then you know that would seem to be you know obvious step forward thank you so much for everyone who's speaking and just in the interest of time i would like to say this ends our panel and our symposium on afghanistan um we are truly so grateful and appreciative and for all those comments and insights and tahara will definitely be in touch about um what you were mentioning um and again um thank you very much for coming and um for you know being part of this and for giving us this hour and to listen to all of your incredible voices and perspectives we are truly truly grateful um and we couldn't thought of a better way to um end our symposium