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On 15 August 2021, the Islamist Taliban marched into Kabul shortly after NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan had begun their withdrawal. In the West, the event is known as ‘The Fall of Kabul’; for the holy warriors, it was a ‘day of victory’. While we are left with the horrific images of people desperately clinging to airplane wings in a bid to flee only to fall from the sky, the Taliban have declared the date a national holiday and, last year, had flowers dropped from helicopters in several Afghan cities.
Around 200 people died in 2021 during the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport. More than 123,000 were evacuated in the days that followed, mainly foreign embassy staff, NGO workers, soldiers and, to a lesser extent, Afghan employees. President Ashraf Ghani fled into exile in Dubai on the same day.
Much has been said about these horrific scenes and the 20-year run-up to them. It has been interpreted as the end of Western interventionist policy, a victory over NATO, the end of the West. Armin Laschet, then Minister-President of the German Bundesland North Rhine-Westphalia and Angela Merkel’s designated successor, said that the fall of Kabul was “the greatest debacle NATO has faced since its founding, we are facing a turning point in history”.
Since then, turning points and debacles have followed one another in such rapid succession that all those who, as recently as 2002, had promised the young Afghan government under Hamid Karzai that “Afghanistan would never be abandoned again” would now prefer not to remember it. The military defeat was followed in the West by a decline in moral and legal standards in dealing with people from Afghanistan that comes close to self-destruction. ‘You have the watches, we have the time,’ as the Taliban said back then. The gulf between intention and action is an abyss. And now – in Nietzsche’s words – the abyss is staring back.
While the West – and with it the German government – had originally set out to build democracy and guarantee women’s human rights in Afghanistan after years of civil war and dictatorship, today Western governments court the Taliban. German Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) has even recently struck a deal with the Taliban, effective from 2025, which allows the German government to deport refugees who have not committed any crimes back to Afghanistan. He describes this as ‘consistent’ – after all, his government wants nothing more to do with the ‘We can do it’ optimism of the Merkel years.
The End of Women’s Rights
The moral question of what the 59 Bundeswehr soldiers, sent to Afghanistan by previous governments, who were killed in action actually died for remains unanswered. The same applies to the more than 200,000 people who, according to the “Uppsala Conflict Data Programme” at Uppsala University in Sweden, lost their lives during the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. But the survivors, too, have little to hope for.
One of the first measures taken by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) – as the Taliban regime calls itself – after seizing power in August 2021 was of great symbolic significance: the renaming of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Since 2024, the ministry has once again been enforcing dress codes for both women and men – though, of course, primarily for women. Men must grow beards at least as long as their fists, wear loose-fitting clothing and pray punctually at a mosque. Women must be completely veiled, with only their eyes visible.
Women are not allowed to leave the house without a male escort, travel by bus, or go to hospital or the park on their own. They are not allowed to speak loudly or read in public.
According to the United Nations, women and girls have lost virtually all their fundamental human rights. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits girls and women from accessing secondary and higher education. Almost 2.2 million of them are no longer allowed to attend school beyond primary level. Women are not allowed to leave the house without a male escort, travel by bus, or go to hospital or the park on their own. They are not allowed to speak loudly or read in public. As a result, women have also been forced out of journalism. Since 2021, more than 80 per cent of women working in the media have lost their jobs.
The Women-for-Women podcast, supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation since 2026, aims to give Afghan women a voice. Here, we document the stories of two Afghan women as representative examples. There are thousands more voices that will never be heard. Many of their stories never reach the outside world, and even when they do, the international response is usually limited to statements expressing concern and condemnation.
To date, no effective measures have been taken to put an end to the injustice and oppression of women imposed by the Taliban.
Nazifa: “It’s All Over”
From first grade to tenth grade, Nazifa was always top of her class. She dreamed of studying medicine. But in tenth grade, everything changed. The Taliban seized power. Schools were closed. Preparatory courses for the university entrance exam were cancelled. Every door that could have led to her future was shut. Nazifa sank into a deep depression.
Her family suffered deeply as they watched her lose herself. They made her see a psychiatrist, but the medication had little effect. She could no longer sleep at night. She even gave up reading – the activity that had once been the most important part of her life.
One day, overcome by despair, Nazifa decided to end her life. Without her family’s knowledge, she took an overdose of pills. When her family tried to wake her, they found her unconscious and rushed her to hospital. After the doctors had pumped her stomach, her life was saved. From that day onwards, her family watched over her constantly.
The Taliban have destroyed our lives. They have destroyed all my hopes.
Some time later, Nazifa asked her sister to take her back to school. She said she missed her classmates and wanted to see the younger girls who were still attending school. Her sister, who was a teacher and taught classes below Year 7, agreed to take her there. Nazifa walked into her old classroom. She looked at the empty school desks. She found a small piece of chalk and slowly wrote on the blackboard: ‘It’s all over.’
When she got back home, she seemed more at peace than she had been for months. Her family were relieved. They believed that the visit to her school had helped her to recover. But it was merely the calm before the storm. The night passed quietly. When her mother and sister tried to wake her for breakfast the next morning, she did not respond. Panic spread through the family. They found a letter next to her bed. It read:
“It’s all over. The Taliban have destroyed our lives. They have destroyed all my hopes. I bought rat poison from a shop. Please forgive me. I will never forgive the Taliban.” Her family took Nazifa back to hospital. But this time, the doctors told them there was nothing more they could do for her. Nazifa was dead. She was only 18 years old.
Masuda: Everywhere Is a Prison
Masuda (27, name changed) was arrested after protesting against the Taliban closing schools and universities. Along with many other young women, she campaigned for “education, work and freedom”. She spent eight months in a Taliban prison.
During her detention, she attempted to take her own life on several occasions, but was unsuccessful. She recalls being repeatedly beaten by Taliban guards. The prisoners were given food only once a day, food that had gone bad already. As the food was thrown in front of them, they were degraded with insults: “Whore, eat that!” The physical abuse was painful, but the humiliation was even worse.
When Masuda was finally released, she hoped that returning home would bring her peace. Instead, she found that things were no better at home than they had been in prison. Her parents had died years earlier, and she was living with her brothers and their wives. Before the Taliban returned to power, Masuda had a job. She worked hard and handed over her earnings to support her brothers and the family.
When Masuda was finally released from prison, she hoped that returning home would bring her peace. Instead, she found that things were no better at home than they had been in prison.
But after the Taliban banned women from working, she lost her job. Instead of acknowledging her sacrifices, her sisters-in-law now treated her like a burden – as someone who contributed nothing and simply relied on others. Every day they mocked and insulted her. They repeatedly claimed that the Taliban had sexually abused her in prison. They called her a prostitute. They told her that no decent man would ever marry her because she had been imprisoned by the Taliban.
Exhausted by the endless humiliations, Masuda finally agreed to marry a 65-year-old man – a match arranged and approved by her sisters-in-law. The man had already lost his first wife to illness. From his first marriage, he had two adult sons and three adult daughters. When Masuda entered her husband’s house and stepped into their bedroom for the first time, his first question was: “Are you still a virgin?”
To this day, Masuda continues to endure insults from both her elderly husband and his children. From morning till night, she works as an unpaid labourer. She does the washing, cooks meals, sweeps the house, irons everyone’s clothes and carries out every household chore. At the end of every gruelling day, she is forced to spend the night with a man whose sweat and unwashed body are so overpowering that she can barely bear the smell. For Masuda, prison is over – yet her suffering continues. It has merely taken on a different form.
Germany’s Deportation Policy in Court
The German government is no longer interested in these stories. In this regard, it appears to be following the lead of the notorious US entrepreneur Elon Musk who sees compassion as a weakness of Western civilisation. As early as 2024, the German government wound up the federal resettlement programme for Afghans who had worked for German organisations on the ground and who now face persecution and violence at the hands of the Taliban.
On 22 July 2026, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that German Minister of the Interior Dobrindt suspending the admission of vulnerable Afghans – a measure promised by previous federal governments – was arbitrary and capricious. Germany’s highest court announced in Karlsruhe that a constitutional complaint lodged by an Afghan woman with two minor sons had been upheld. Although the executive branch is granted considerable discretion, it is never “completely free” since there is due process, the court ruled. The Federal Government, the court warned, is bound by the principles of the rule of law.
