ROME (AP) — Batool Haidari was a distinguished professor of sexology at a Kabul university before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She taught mixed classes of female and male students, and helped patients battling gender identity issues.
Her husband owned a carpet factory, and together they did their best to offer a superb education for his or her 18-year-old son and two daughters aged 13 and eight.
That comfortable life got here to an abrupt halt on Aug. 15, 2021, when the previous insurgents who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam swept back into power following a costly two-decade U.S.-led campaign to remake the country.
Haidari, 37, was amongst the various women who fled the Taliban, fearing a return to the practices of their previous rule within the late Nineties, including largely barring women and girls from education and work. She reached Rome at the tip of 2021, after a daring escape through Pakistan aided by Italian volunteers who arranged for her and her family to be hosted within the Italian capital’s suburbs.
She is amongst hundreds of Afghani women looking for to keep up an energetic social role within the countries which have taken them in. Haidari and her husband are studying Italian while being financially supported by various associations. She keeps in contact with feminist organizations back home and tries to keep up contact with a few of her patients via the web.
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“Being alive is already a type of resistance,” she said, adding that she wants her children to contribute to the longer term of Afghanistan, where she is bound her family will return at some point.
“When my son passed the exam to access the college of Medicine at a university in Rome, for me it was excellent news,” she said, during a commute to her Italian classes in central Romer. “Because if I got here to a European country, it was mainly for the longer term of my children.”
After they overran Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban initially promised to respect women’s and minorities’ rights. As a substitute, they step by step imposed a ban on girls’ education beyond sixth grade, kept women away from most fields of employment, and compelled them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.
Haidari tried to remain in Kabul along with her family after the Taliban took over. She became an outspoken activist of the Afghanistan Women’s Political Participation Network to fight for ladies’s education, work and political involvement.
However the risks soon became too high. Haidari was not only an informed female activist, but in addition a member of the Hazara ethnic group.
The Hazara minority has been a frequent goal of violence for the reason that Taliban takeover. Most are Shiite Muslims, despised and targeted by Sunni militants just like the Islamic State group, and discriminated against by many within the Sunni majority country.
Haidari received death threats for her research on sensitive issues in Afghan society, and in December 2021 decided to depart. She crossed to Pakistan along with her family, and an Italian journalist, Maria Grazia Mazzola, helped her get on a plane from Pakistan to Italy.
“We heard that Taliban were shooting and searching houses very near their hiding place,” Mazzola said. “We were frantically in contact with the Italian embassy in Pakistan, with confidential contacts in Afghanistan, and we decided together that they’d to alter their hiding place every three days.”
The Italian government evacuated greater than 5,000 Afghans on military planes right after the Taliban takeover. Later, a network of Italian feminists, Catholic and Evangelical Churches and volunteers like Mazzola kept organizing humanitarian corridors and arrange hospitality in Italy throughout the next 12 months.
Mazzola, who works for Italian public RAI TV and is an authority on Islamic fundamentalism, created a network of associations to host 70 Afghans, mostly Hazara women activists and their families.
Now that the refugees are in Italy and step by step getting asylum, Mazzola said, the priority is to secure for them official recognition of their university degrees or other qualifications that may help them find dignified employment.
“A girl like Batool (Haidari) cannot work as a cleaner in a college. It might be a waste for our society too. She is a psychologist and deserves to proceed working as such,” Mazzola said.
Haidari agreed. While she said she misses the streets and alleys of Kabul, and the straightforward life she used to have, “most of all I miss the undeniable fact that in Afghanistan I used to be a way more useful person.”
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