translated from Persian

طالبان در خیابان، مردان در خانه؛ چگونه صدای اعتراض زنان افغانستان خاموش می‌شود؟

For Afghan girls and women, even social media has become a contested last refuge, where protest against Taliban repression is often silenced first by the men inside their own homes.

Rukhshana Media · By Ziba Balkhi · 7 July 2026 · read the original in Persian →

Ziba Balkhiزیبا بلخی

“We could have been happier girls, if not for the tyranny of geography.” This brief sentence was written over a video that Fariba posted on Friday morning, 22 Jawza, on her WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram stories in support of the girls arrested in Herat. The video showed painted images of a girl standing before an armed Talib and two schoolgirls weeping behind the closed gate of a school.

The message of Fariba’s story was simple and clear: the suppression of individual freedoms, deprivation of education, and restrictions imposed on women’s art and identity.

For Fariba*, twenty-four, this was the only way to pour out her pain, to stand in sympathy with the girls arrested in Herat, and to raise a voice that was not allowed to be heard in the street.

But the video and text survived on Fariba’s social media accounts for only an hour. “My father came into the house and was calling my name loudly... I went, and he slapped me hard across the face and said, You will never become a decent person, you shameless girl!”

Her father threatened Fariba that if she ever again posted protest material against the Taliban from her social media account, she would be deprived of having a phone forever.

Fariba knew her father opposed this. She had limited his access through the settings. “But I had forgotten that I also had to hide it from my lalay, my brother... After that I cried for hours.”

For Fariba, what her father did had one clear meaning: women in Afghanistan are deprived not only by the Taliban but also inside the home of the right to protest, even the right to mourn and show solidarity.

This is while the Taliban are intensely active in the virtual sphere. They mostly use fake accounts and women’s names to propagandize for, praise, and whitewash the Taliban.

Fariba had repeatedly been forced to delete posts about women that carried a critical edge.

Fariba was in her second year of studying English when she was barred from going to university.

She decided to publish a protest video about the condition of women on her social media pages after her family prevented her from attending a protest gathering that was to be held in support of the women of Herat.

A few days after news spread of the arrests of girls in Herat, Fariba, while browsing Facebook, came across a notice announcing a gathering in Mazar-i-Sharif in support of the detained women. The notice asked women and men to gather on Friday morning, 22 Jawza, near the Rawza Mubarak and raise their voices in protest in support of the girls and women of Herat province.

Fariba immediately sent the post to several of her friends. Of her eleven friends, five said they were ready, and Fariba’s nineteen-year-old sister also decided to attend the gathering with her. They created a WhatsApp group to coordinate the time of departure, the meeting place, and how they would take part in the gathering.

She says they agreed that each person would inform her family that night and that the next morning, at eight o’clock, they would meet at the appointed place. “I expected even my father and brother to join us and go into the street to protest. Because they were always talking about honor and reputation, so how could they watch the Taliban arrest girls and do nothing? But my father did not give us permission and said we should never even think about taking part in a protest.”

Fariba says that afterward she returned to her room in despair and wrote in the WhatsApp group she had made with her friends that she did not have permission to attend the gathering. A few minutes later, one after another, messages from her friends also arrived; all of them had written that their father or brother had not allowed them to leave the house. “Girls, my brother did not allow me either; I also cannot take part in tomorrow’s demonstration.”

Fariba’s description of the situation is bitter and despairing: “If we do not defend our own rights, then who will?”

The Taliban group began a wave of arrests of women and girls in Herat on 16 Jawza of this year, on the pretext of failure to observe hijab.

On Tuesday, 19 Jawza, these arrests were met with protest by a number of residents of the Jibril area of Herat city. The Taliban suppressed the gathering with gunfire; as a result of the incident, at least two people were killed, three were wounded, and a number of protesters were also arrested.

Nuria, one of Fariba’s friends and classmates at university, who was also supposed to join her in Friday’s protest gathering in Balkh, faced her family’s opposition the night before the street protest was to take place.

Nuria was in her second year in the English literature faculty at a private university in Mazar-i-Sharif when, because of the Taliban’s restrictions on the education and schooling of women and girls, she was prevented from continuing her studies. After her family did not allow her to take part in the street protest, she, too, like Fariba, decided at least not to remain silent in the virtual sphere.

Nuria posted part of a song and a text in support of the women of Herat on her WhatsApp status, or story, and on her Facebook page; her only aim was to express her feelings and her protest against the condition of women in Afghanistan. “Ten minutes after I posted it, my father messaged me that I had to delete my post and story quickly.”

Nuria said: “They have forced me many times to delete my text or post. They humiliated me, insulted me. They told me I did not care about the family’s honor and that I would get the family into trouble. I deleted my Facebook story and post, put my phone away, and cried. How helpless we women are, that even in the virtual space we have no freedom.”

Since coming to power, the Taliban have widely suppressed women’s street protests. Human Rights Watch has previously said that, after the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan, the group’s response to peaceful protests by women has been brutal.

For some girls and women, social networks have become the last aperture through which they can express their feelings, protests, and accounts of their experiences.

A number of the girls spoken to in this report say that before they worry about the Taliban’s reaction to a post or a piece of writing, they face the reaction of the men in their families.

These reactions begin with orders to delete social media posts and stories, and in some cases lead to reproach, humiliation, insult, threats, confiscation of a mobile phone, deprivation of access to social networks, and even beatings.

Alia*, twenty-seven, studied in the faculty of education at Samangan University; but when universities were closed to girls, she was prevented from continuing her studies.

Alia says social networks were the only place where she could share her pain and suffering, her views, and her feelings about the condition of women with others.

On the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, in August 2025, she posted a video with a song about the condition of women in Afghanistan on her Facebook status, or story. “That same day my father took my phone and said, You do not go to university or the institute, you do not need a big phone... It has now been a year since I used social networks... I had a feeling of fear and suffocation, like someone who has things to say, but someone is gripping her throat tightly so no sound can get out.”

The experience of Sajia*, twenty-five, from Jawzjan province, is no different from the accounts of Fariba and Alia.

Sajia was in her sixth semester in the journalism faculty at Jawzjan University when she was prevented from continuing her studies. After the medical institutes were closed to girls, she wrote a text protesting the deprivation of girls from education and posted it on her Facebook status, or story.

An hour after it was published, her father sent her a message on Messenger and asked her to delete it, and told her not to publish such material again.

From that day on, even her ordinary activities on social networks came under family surveillance. “When I wrote, I felt that the grief gathered in my chest became a little lighter. I thought that if even ten or twenty people read what I had written, it meant my voice had reached a few people. But my brother said, Delete your post, and do not even follow pages that publish material against the Taliban, do not like them, and do not write comments under their posts.”

Sajia had written: “‘Neither my tresses, nor my eyes, nor the sharp blade of my lashes: why should I cover myself inside the burqa of your ignorance?’ My cousin and my brother messaged me and rebuked me and said, Why do you not listen? They threatened me that if I repeated it again, they would have to behave more harshly with me, by which they meant beating me.”

Although many girls say the men in their families prevent them from acting freely on social networks, the reasons for this opposition are not the same in every family.

Shamsullah Rahimi, a resident of Mazar-i-Sharif and brother to three sisters, says his opposition to his sisters publishing protest content stems mostly from security concerns. “Several times my sister posted images and texts that showed the bad situation of women, deprived of their rights. I told them to delete them. Even when they did not respond to kind words, we threatened them; we told them in a serious tone not to publish such things again.”

Asma Niazi, a women’s rights activist, stresses that the security concerns of some families are understandable, but says these concerns must not lead to the complete silencing of women’s voices. “There is a great difference between protecting security and silencing women’s voices. Right now girls need their families to be their first supporters, not to prevent them from expressing their views and feelings.”

For girls like Sajia, these restrictions by the men in their families have deepened their sense of being ignored, rendered powerless, and erased from society. “We have no freedom at all. We have one phone, WhatsApp and Facebook, and even there we are under heavy censorship by the family, and they put so much pressure on us that we cannot publish or write anything.”

Note: Names marked with an asterisk* are pseudonyms used in this report for the safety of sources.