For decades, women in Afghanistan have been among the first and easiest victims of fundamentalist fascism and imperialism. In every era and under every ruling regime, misogynistic policies and practices have either persisted or intensified. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal and feudal order, women are either confined within their homes—stripped of their humanity—or exploited as props in the grotesque spectacles of U.S.-NATO occupation, used to mask the occupiers’ crimes and ignorance while propping up their hollow and reactionary proxies.

During the bloody and treacherous rule of the Jihadi bands in the 1990s, thousands of women were subjected to the most heinous abuses—from the rape of seven-year-old girls to seventy-year-old women, from women forced to give birth in the streets to breast-cuttings and the widespread imposition of forced marriages on young girls. These horrors were only fragments of the filth and brutality committed by the Jihadi and Ikhwani gangs.

Afterward, in their first Emirate from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban imprisoned women within the four walls of their homes by erasing them entirely from public life, while their commanders routinely seized two or three women each as wives by force.

After the September 11 tragedy and the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan, they once again empowered the Jihadi warlords—men whose entire histories were soaked in blood and crime—to rule over our people and unleash yet more savage and dehumanizing violence, especially against women. During the twenty years of U.S. aggression, women like Farkhunda, Tabasoom, Rakhshana, Jamila, and thousands of unnamed and forgotten victims were sacrificed to the shared intoxication of brutality embraced by both the Jihadis and the Taliban. Meanwhile, NATO’s bombings and war crimes dragged hundreds of thousands of Afghans into the grave and turned our villages into ruins.

Western and CIA support was not limited to the male Jihadi and Taliban terrorists. It also elevated a cohort of treacherous female collaborators—such as Naheed Farid, Shukria Barakzai, Fawzia Koofi, Amina Balkhi, Qadriya Yazdanparast, Fatima Gailani, Amina Afzali, Sima Samar, Habiba Sarabi, Shinkai Karokhail, and others—rewarding them with prizes, positions, dollars, and fame. Their role was to legitimize the façade of the ‘war on terror’ and the supposed struggle for ‘democracy,’ and to sell to the world the fabricated narrative of ‘liberating Afghan women’.

In August 2021, the United States and the West once again handed power to the brutal Taliban. The primary battlefield for these ignorant fanatics has been against women. Over the past four years, women have been erased from all political and social life—from attending schools and universities to holding jobs or performing civic duties. Mandatory hejab, bans on moving without a male guardian, prohibitions on music, and the closure of all educational and vocational centers for women, along with dozens of other medieval laws, have all targeted women. Many protesting women under this regime of ignorance and crime have been subjected to the worst forms of torture and sexual violence in prisons. Countless women have been mysteriously killed or disappeared, alongside other horrific crimes. Taliban oppression, which has further entrenched poverty, unemployment, and insecurity, has made the situation for women even more catastrophic.

Yet, despite decades of oppression, repression, and pressure, Afghan women have always stood at the forefront of struggle, fearlessly raising their voices against injustice and crime, undeterred by arrest, imprisonment, threats, or harassment, exposing the filthy faces of imperialist and foreign collaborators. Just as Meena, the leader and founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), established the first women’s political organization in Afghanistan, expanding the women’s struggle from basic social demands to profound political change and taking to the streets, she proved that women are not ‘weak’ or ‘incapable,’ but ‘sleeping lions’ who, once awakened, conscious, and united, can defeat the most powerful enemies and seize power. Her struggles and those of her comrades have, for years, inspired and guided the resistance of Afghan women and continue to do so. Meena was assassinated in 1987, yet her goals and ideals remain a model for progressive and struggling Afghan women to this day.

Likewise, when the courageous women of Kobani took up arms and crushed the faces of the ISIS forces into the ground, we have consistently defended their struggle and resistance, emphasizing that the only path to liberation from oppression and exploitation is through struggle and steadfastness.

Violence against women has its roots in political, social, and economic factors, and until it is addressed fundamentally, no effective step can be taken to eradicate this oppression. The experiences of other nations have shown that awareness, persistent struggle, and the active participation of women in these arenas can elevate them to a position where, alongside men, they can play a decisive role in ending oppression and advancing society.

The women of our land face two major enemies, against whom the struggle must be central to every revolutionary organization and individual: imperialism and fundamentalism. These two are interconnected, and for over four decades, especially the United States and the West, have strengthened, armed, and supported Islamic fundamentalist groups and gangs, turning a blind eye to all their crimes. Through these groups, the U.S. has sought to suppress and eradicate every progressive, justice-seeking, and pro-democracy movement and voice.

Cheryl Benard, a RAND Corporation expert and spouse of Zalmay Khalilzad, conceded: “The reason we don’t have moderate leaders in Afghanistan today is because we let the nuts [the fundamentalists] kill them all. They killed the leftists, the moderates, the middle-of-the-roaders. They were just eliminated, during the 1980s and afterward.” (Dreyfuss, Robert, Devil’s Game: How the United States helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Metropolitan Books, 2005.)

History has repeatedly proven that no nation has ever been liberated through kneeling, fear, silence, or flight. Our liberation will not be guaranteed by foreign armies or their puppet governments, but by our own strong arms and our own iron will—the only force capable of freeing this wounded country from the grip of imperialism and reactionaries.

The invading and occupying powers, time and again, simply change their masks and install new servants whose essence remains the same. Yesterday it was the Jihadis, today it is the Taliban, and if their interests demand it, they will raise the ISIS forces to power tomorrow like what they did in Syria. But it is we who must keep the flame of resistance alive and overcome the suffocating darkness that seeks to crush all hope, so that we may build a free and democratic Afghanistan—one founded on secularism and social justice. In such a society, alongside all ethnicities and faiths, the oppressed and long-suffering women of our land will finally taste equality.

Progressive, anti‑fundamentalist, and anti‑imperialist forces can, through organization and concrete struggle, bring closer the day when our people will no longer be sacrificed to political deal‑makers and religious executioners. We must draw inspiration from the fierce steadfastness of the heroic people of Palestine who, under bombardment, famine, and genocide in Gaza, shattered the false pride and the so‑called ‘myth of Israel’s invincibility,’ reviving the Palestinian cause that much of the world had chosen to forget.

Inspired by these examples, we too can liberate Afghanistan from the grip of tyrannical, fascistic, misogynistic, and reactionary regimes.

This article was first published in Yeni Özgür Politika and translated to English by ANF.