Zainab Saberi was born in Afghanistan, but has lived much of her life in Iran. She holds a law degree from Gawharshad University and a master’s degree in Criminal Law from Imam Khomeini International University in Iran, and now lives in Barcelona as part of PEN Català’s Writer in Residence (Escriptor Acollit) programme. Involved from a very young age in humanitarian projects and in defending the rights of women and of the Hazara minority, to which she belongs, she had to flee Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power.
After being detained and interrogated on several occasions for denouncing the Taliban regime’s crimes against women and ethnic minorities, and after suffering physical and psychological violence and threats, Saberi fled the country with her daughter in the summer of 2021, when US troops withdrew from the country.
As well as living in Barcelona, Zainab Saberi was recently collaborating as a volunteer investigative journalist with Bolaq Analyst Network, an independent NGO based in the United States. Her work consisted of documenting the crimes perpetrated by the Taliban and extremist Islamic groups against the Hazara minority, the people to which she belongs. In addition to her work as a documentarian and journalist, Saberi also turns her gaze to art as a form of therapy and protest.
Zainab Saberi belongs to the minoritised Hazara people, a Shia minority that has historically suffered persecution and has been forced to migrate in order to survive. While in the 19th century the Hazaras were the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, after the massacres carried out between 1891 and 1893 during the Hazara War, the population decreased considerably. The genocidal campaign against them forced many members of this community to flee to Pakistan or Iran. “Systematic discrimination, as well as recurrent episodes of targeted violence and forced displacement, have caused the Hazara community to lose a large part of its population and its position in the social hierarchy of modern Afghanistan,” states the organisation Minority Rights Groups.
Violence, discrimination, both religious and identity-based stigmatisation, and persecution are still a reality for members of the Hazara minority, who are the target of the Taliban but also, in the past, of extremist groups such as the Islamic State (IS). Mass killings, kidnappings, attacks and the underdevelopment of the regions where Hazara communities live were a constant during the Taliban’s rule, before the US invasion. Today, the situation has not changed much: the waves of violence against the mosques where they pray, the dismantling of Hazara cultural and educational centres, the restrictions and, in short, the institutionalised discrimination against the minority continue to be a reality. So does impunity.
In this context, Zainab Saberi has been working for years to document the systematic human rights violations against members of this minority. Through interviews and the reconstruction of events, she records the genocide against her people.
2021, the return of the Taliban to power
After twenty years of occupation and war, in August 2021 the United States withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. They had been stationed there since 2001, when the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and on Washington took place. After the attack, the George W. Bush Administration decided to invade Afghanistan with the aim of bringing down the Taliban regime, in power since 1996. It is estimated that around 25,000 people died in Afghanistan during the years of the US occupation.
The withdrawal of US troops on 15 August 2021, under the leadership of President Joe Biden, led to the Taliban’s return to power, which has caused the deterioration of the rights of citizens, especially women —who cannot study beyond the age of twelve and are forbidden from practising certain professions or going out alone in the street, among other things— and the country’s minoritised peoples.
The precarious human rights situation in the country has meant that, since then, there has been a constant trickle of people deciding to leave. Many of them, like Zainab Saberi, do so via Pakistan, where international bodies have also documented violations of the rights of Afghan people seeking refuge.
The return of the Taliban to power has particularly affected women and girls. In fact, the United Nations speaks of “the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world”. It is estimated that more than 10 million women and girls in the country need immediate humanitarian assistance, above all in terms of housing, medical care and access to drinking water. Since the Taliban came to power, the number of child marriages and teenage pregnancies has increased; women’s representation in decision-making, as well as their access to public spaces, is, for now, non-existent.
The Taliban have also targeted civil society organisations focused on providing tools to women and young people. The criminalisation of international aid has meant that many of these organisations have had to abandon their projects in Afghanistan. As a result, thousands of women have been left unprotected.
UNHCR estimates that, since the Taliban seized power again, more than one and a half million people have fled the country, the vast majority via Pakistan, a country where their rights continue to be violated. Their documents are often confiscated and they are returned to Afghanistan, with everything that entails.
The normalisation of the Taliban in the world
Since 2021, the Taliban have tried to whitewash their image and present themselves to the world as moderate rulers. Despite their iron fist against women and minoritised groups —Human Rights Watch has described the actions against girls and women as ‘crimes against humanity’— and their systematic human rights violations, the fact is that they have embassies in various countries.
Proof of the normalisation of the regime is the meeting held at the end of June between a Taliban delegation —who were granted a special visa— and members of the European Parliament. The aim of the meeting, heavily criticised by international human rights organisations, was to discuss the deportation of Afghan asylum seekers from Europe. The meeting is part of the implementation of the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum (PEMA) and the new Return Directive, approved on 17 June in Strasbourg by the European Parliament.
Why or how did you become interested in defending human rights?
As an Afghan woman, if you live in Afghanistan, you can see the problems that women have to face in that country. I started working as a volunteer with the Human Rights Commission, and every day I saw many women who were suffering violence. The problems of women in Afghanistan are related to our culture; because we have rights and laws, and some of these laws even support us, but we cannot access our rights because of the structural problems that exist in the country. There are certain attitudes that Afghans have accepted as established roles and that have continued to be perpetuated deliberately, such as considering women to be the property of men.
In Afghanistan, if you suffer violence at home and go to the police or contact the authorities, your own family and the rest of society consider you a woman of ill repute. And you can do nothing but keep quiet, because not even your family supports you.
You are of Afghan origin, but you were born in and have lived much of your life in Iran. What has it been like to live as an ethnic minority in the Islamic Republic?
In reality, living in Iran has had its ups and downs. We Hazaras have a different, Asian physiognomy. In Iran we suffer psychological abuse because of our physical features, but we also suffer labour exploitation, and dealing with it has been difficult. On the other hand, I grew up there. I have friends there, and my family still lives there. When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, my family insisted that I go back to Iran, but I decided not to because I did not want to live through that experience again.
What kind of mistreatment do you Hazaras face?
We Hazaras in Afghanistan have suffered more than a century of systematic persecution because of our Asian features, our dialect and our Shia faith in a predominantly Sunni country. This suffering has deep historical roots. In the 1890s, the Hazaras began to be branded as “infidels” and approximately 60% of the Hazara population was killed or displaced. This violence resurfaced throughout the 20th century.
Since the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021, this persecution has continued. Hazaras have been killed and maimed in schools, hospitals, mosques, buses, weddings, markets and sports clubs, many of them in Dasht-e-Barchi, the western neighbourhood of Kabul where most of the city’s Hazaras live. Between January 2017 and June 2021, the UN documented 2,458 Hazara civilian casualties Beyond direct killings, the community suffers forced displacement, kidnappings and the destruction of homes and livelihoods
However, statistics alone cannot capture what it means to live under this shadow. As someone who lived in Afghanistan after the return of the Taliban, I witnessed how the Hazara community has become even more vulnerable. Exclusion follows us everywhere: in the streets, in schools, in hospitals, literally everywhere.. There are attacks on public transport and vehicles. Even children learn to be afraid: I remember that my daughter, when we lived in Afghanistan and she was only four years old, never wanted to go by car and always insisted on walking. It is hard to live like that. All these acts can be considered genocide, based on what is stated in Article II of the Genocide Convention, because there is intent. We are a people persecuted simply for existing, whose pain the world has too often ignored.
You fled Afghanistan via Pakistan. What was that process like?
I was in Pakistan for three months and everything was a great challenge. The people who supported me did everything they could and helped me a lot, but the hardest part was getting the visa. They wanted to issue me a student visa, but of course they asked me for a criminal record certificate, a medical examination and other documents. That was difficult to obtain. Because here is the thing: Spain does not recognise the Taliban government, but it does accept its documents. Spain was asking me for certificates that I had to obtain from the Taliban.
That doesn’t make much sense, does it?
If you do not recognise the Taliban as a government, then you should not ask them for any documentation. The biggest challenge was always getting the visa. I could only stay in Pakistan for two months, so my visa there also expired and the Pakistani police arrested us and took us to a [detention] centre. That was when PEN Català spoke with the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya and with the Mayor of Barcelona, and they contacted the embassy. In the end, I was issued a humanitarian visa.
In Barcelona you are part of PEN Català’s Writer in Residence (Escriptor acollit) programme. What is your life like here?
I am taking some Catalan courses and everything is going very well. They support me physically and mentally and my daughter goes to school every day. We have a very nice home and everything is fine; above all because they are helping me regain my self-confidence, and they are also helping me learn some skills that will be useful for the future. Some volunteers come to my home every week to talk to me and help me build connections.
What did your work with Bolaq Analyst Network involve?
I collaborated with them writing about the Hazara genocide and about human rights. We gathered information about the people who had lost their lives in explosions. We went to hospitals, universities and schools, and tried to find their families. Then we went to their homes and asked them to tell us how everything had happened, we filmed them and we compiled everything. If we want the rest of the world to recognise the Hazara genocide in Afghanistan, everything has to be documented.
Your family is in Iran. How are they experiencing everything that has happened?
My mother and my sister do not have identity documents in Iran because the government has not issued them. In addition, my brother’s daughter cannot go to school because they are not allowed to. Apart from that, whenever a problem or conflict arises between the government and the population, the government blames the refugees. For example, with Israel’s attack on Iran, it was said on social media that people of Afghan origin had sent locations and information to the Israeli state. This makes daily life increasingly difficult.
One of your hobbies is painting and using art as therapy.
I believe that art is a language from which everyone can draw some lesson or message. I use art as a language of protest. All my paintings are about the situation of women in Afghanistan.
Some information reaches us about how the situation of women in Afghanistan has worsened in recent months, but not much, since there are hardly any international reporters in the country. What is the current situation there?
In Afghanistan, violence against women has increased; new, very restrictive laws on women have been passed. There are also new laws on child marriage and forced marriage. On the other hand, the other problem is that women in Afghanistan not only have to face violence from society, but also encounter this violence within the family environment. Moreover, the situation has been deteriorating because they cannot work: when you have no work, no mental occupation, you sink. In any case, we tend to stay on the surface of the problems. I have friends who ask me if I can help them leave. They ask me about scholarships. It is hard. Some are even considering leaving the country through marriage to people they do not know, just to have a way out. The other person’s age does not matter, nor anything else; they just want to leave.
Another thing I noticed before leaving the country is that the number of women begging had increased a lot. Before the Taliban returned to power, in our part of the city, in Barchi, there were not many. But now there are; you see them in front of the bakery, asking for a piece of bread. People take advantage of these girls who are on the street, who have no family or anyone to support them. They have nothing. Many men rape them. That is why I say that many things are happening that we cannot even imagine.
How did you receive the news that US troops were leaving the country in August 2021?
That day was really hard. The first thing I thought was that I am part of the Hazara people. I thought they would come to our home and that a great genocide would be unleashed in Barchi. I remember wishing that they would kill me first, before my daughter.
How do you feel about the Taliban being received diplomatically in other countries and recognised as valid interlocutors?
I believe that the Taliban, as a government, constitute a crime against human rights. You cannot be a defender of human rights and at the same time receive them diplomatically. I do not understand it. I think people must put pressure on their governments not to recognise the Taliban regime. There is also something else that I think is important: the international community is asking the Taliban to open the doors of the schools, but it should not be like that. The Taliban should also close the schools for boys. Because right now, the boys in the country are receiving the education that the Taliban want. That means that in a matter of 10 or 20 years the whole population will share the Taliban’s ideas. And that is not good either for Afghanistan or for the world.
