Afghanistan, The cry of women: “We segregate, what color does our future have?”

This entry is posted on number 38 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until September 16, 2025.

Kabul. Ba arrived at the medical garrison by walking for four hours with his son. Her husband works the earth, She works the earth with himeven if – he says – it is increasingly difficult, because every year that passes there is less water, the earth drys out, the harvest is not even enough to feed the family, let alone sell what remains. They have six children, three females and three males, what he has with him is the penultimate. None of the children go to school, a little because there is not a close school, and a little because even if there were no means of transport.

THE’Rural Afghanistan This is how a very hard, dry land made of rocks consumed by the time and fatigue of those who try to work it despite the drought: «There is no water to irrigate the landwe cultivated them, we cultivated the land as expected for the rainy season, but it has not rained, we have no other sources of water, and everything has annoyed. We cultivated beans and tomatoes, but nothing has grown due to drought. We also find it hard to find drinking water at least for our young children ».

Ba’s son has a heart problem, they have no money for care, they have no money to move elsewhere, so the Intersos Clinic In the very remote province of Uruzgan is the only option to try to alleviate his suffering. The child is exhausted, exhausted by the heat, from the hours of walking, the doctors tell her not to make him walk but she replies: «How do we do it? There is no other way, or we walk for hours in the first leg and return, or I do not take care of it and dies. ” Then he sits in the doctor’s room, his son sits next to her, looks around out of the way, he breathes little, he breathes badly, the doctor asks for the name of their village, their age.

But ba He does not know exactly his age, he says: more or less thirty. More or less thirty. Because time, in the deep Afghanistan, has another flow, follows different oscillations. It can be seen on the face of the woman just freed from the burqa, and marked as if decades of history had passed on the cheeks, it is seen in the expressions of the children, that children are now only personal.

Ba, like the other women of this story, not only does not know exactly his age, but has a name and surname hidden by letters pointed. Even the identity, for women, in the deep Afghanistan, must be hidden behind the burqa fabric. Mimettes, hides, omits.

In 2021, with the chaotic and dramatic retreat of the US troops and the collapse of the Afghan government, the Taliban resumed power. They did it without shooting a blow, conquering the Afghan provinces in a few weeks, one after the other. Since then The life of women in the country has changed Radically in every area: educational, working, familiar, legal, social and symbolic. Not an accidental regression, but an educational, and professional segregation.

The girls are excluded from secondary schoolstudents cannot study, women can no longer work in most public and private sectors, Afghanistan is today The only country in the world where women cannot receive higher education.

The burqa has returned mandatory, women cannot travel alone, nor attend parks, gyms, universities, beauty salons or public places without a Marhama guardian. There is no longer the Ministry for Female Affairs which has been replaced by Ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice. In four years, women disappeared from the public sphere, hidden under their burqa and hidden by the indifference of the world that abandoned them.

Faced with the Afghan crisis, The international community for four years has stopped watching. After the return to the power of the Taliban, the country was slowly sunk in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, at the beginning – when the crisis was emergency – the governments supported it then the answers became more and more warm up to the final blow: the cut of the US funds last February.

The numbers of the last few years are very clear and draw a drama: In 2022, a year after the fall of Kabul and the return to power of the Taliban, the United Nations had launched an appeal for four billion dollars, so much was necessary to respond to primary needs in the country. But in mid -2023, less than 25 percent of the requested funds had been paid.

In 2024, the appeal was further reduced, so The largest humanitarian crisis in the world is today even the most forgotten. Twenty million people, more than half of the population, need humanitarian assistance to survive: among them, 10 million are children. If there are no funds, they close medical principals, clinics, there are no medicines, nor vaccinations, there is no support for pregnant women, nor support after childbirth.

Superfluous to say that the most affected by the cutting of funds and by the indifference widespread on the Afghan crisis are therefore women and children. Children who work in brick factories for a dollar a day, the girls whose marked fate is a wedding when they are 12 years old.

Z. is a crooked, lives in one House of mud and hay In the rural area a few dozen kilometers outside Kabul. He has eight children, he had nine but one is dead. Blood problems, he says without knowing how to explain more, and then stops and says: and he was hungry. The way of Z. to say that the son, like other hundreds of thousands of Afghan children, was seriously malnourished.

He says he is lucky because the other eight are still alive, even if they can’t go to school, but The husband is unemployed and children have to work. Males in brick factories, the females collect pieces of wood that then resell. She would have liked to make her study but have to get married, because they are full of debts and needy: «We cannot do anything, the creditor’s family wants to take the largest in exchange for the debt. He said: I take your daughter instead of money ».

And so, since The choice is between eating or marrying her daughter a few years laterthey sold it to the creditor for the consideration of 300 euros. They had looked in loan to feed everyone for a while. “I remember a period in which for three days I could not cook anything, because we had nothing to eat,” he says, while showing the room used as a kitchen, the void flour containers, he says it while the daughters lower the gaze, the one who is about to get married but also the smallest, who are already – both – promises in marriage. They are six and eight years old.

Afghanistan, Kabul :. Alessio RomenziAlessio Romenzi

S. is thirteen years old, like other women she has reached the clinic walking for hours. To tell his day he says that every morning he says a prayer, cuisine, cleans the house. He wanted to study and become a doctor but in a few weeks he has to get married. He says so: «My father organized everything, after 13 we get married and after a year we already have a son. We don’t know who we will marry and nobody asks us for anything about it ».

A school has never seen it, she would like to read and write but she knows that she will probably never happen. He has his eyes covered by the dense network of his burqa.
“What color do you see in your future, if you close your eyes, S.?”
“Black only.”

The European Union currently finances 11 Intersos health structures in Afghanistan, especially in remote areas such as those of the province of Uruzgan very difficult to reach and not covered by essential services. The activities in Intersos healthcare structures focus on malnutrition, maternal-child health, vaccinations but also on humanitarian protection and mental health, therefore with psychological and psychosocial assistance activities especially aimed at women and children who live in particularly vulnerable communities.
The European Union also finances the interventions of Intersos in response to the crisis of repatriated by Iran.

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