Inside the women’s underground fightback against the brutal Taliban
I remember a bright morning in Kabul, standing on a dusty roadside and frantically waving at a yellow Toyota Corolla taxi, hoping to negotiate a fare to the city where my office was based. The sky was that piercingly clear shade of blue that always made me feel anything was possible. Women were grabbing fresh naan on the go, balancing bags of vegetables from the market and chatting on their phones. Others rushed to work, some in government offices, some in NGOs, while university students – books tucked under their arms – piled into shared taxis, laughing with friends. No one guessed just how quickly the world around us would change. We knew tensions were high, but most of us still believed we had time.
Looking back, I’ve often thought how life can tilt in a heartbeat. When the Taliban took control again in August 2021, it was as if a trapdoor slammed shut under half the population. Overnight, Afghan women were driven out of classrooms, forced out of workplaces, and robbed of even the smallest freedoms.
My colleague Marzia* – once a fearless project manager running workshops for women’s entrepreneurship and USAID initiatives – found herself sitting at home, forced out of work, surviving in a climate of terror. She was one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever encountered, always brainstorming how to expand women-led businesses across every province, with a vision to uplift women across Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s rule has erased women from life in Afghanistan. We have seen the shocking headlines: girls banned from secondary schools, and women from universities; increases in forced marriages and female suicide rates; the near-complete dissolution of women’s healthcare; and a clampdown on women in most public spaces. In January, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban, ordered that buildings should not have windows looking into places where a woman could be sitting or standing.
But what doesn’t always make the headlines is the gritty, ingenious work being done by women at the grassroots level.
This year’s International Women’s Day slogan is “accelerate action” and it captures perfectly what so many of us are feeling: the world’s outrage might be loud online, but the true practical steps to help Afghan women and girls survive these brutal new realities feel painfully slow. As someone who is of Afghan heritage and has friends and colleagues still living there, it doesn’t help me to dwell on how we got here. I’d rather ask: how can we help now, this very minute, not in some pie-in-the-sky future?
I left Afghanistan in 2016, after spending three years there working on UK aid programmes, but I am still in touch with brave women in every province – urban and rural alike – who are determined to keep hope alive.
The dozens of women-led NGOs that I am in contact with through the Friends of Afghan Women Network, are, despite the Taliban’s best efforts, working tirelessly to deliver literacy programmes, addressing malnutrition, helping women start new businesses, supporting farming and agricultural projects as well as running in-person digital skills training in segregated spaces – and fighting tooth and nail to keep their work alive. They are doing this with barely any funding, international recognition or backing.
I think of the wives, daughters and sisters that I met across Afghanistan since I started going back from 2005 – women in Herat, Parwan, Laghman, Mazar and beyond – some of the bravest souls I’ve ever known, now holding each other up in the face of unimaginable odds and forging quiet underground networks of solidarity that defy despair.
To escape the wrath of the Taliban, they have to come up with ingenious tactics. Between 2013 and 2016, I worked directly with a network of women educators. Under the banner of “advanced tailoring classes”, we worked secretly to teach English to groups of young women who’d slip in and out of these sessions when it was safe to do so. As soon as the door clicked shut, our English grammar exercises started. Nobody had dared to advertise them as English classes outright – one glance from the wrong person could lead to a serious crackdown. And yet, despite the anxiety of being caught, the women were electrified by the chance to learn. They giggled over verb conjugations, they scribbled notes, and repeated phrases with fierce determination.
And yes, even under the brutal regime operating today, that same spirit lives on today. I recently connected Marzia* with another grassroots women-led organisation run by Shakiba*, who helps train “health champions” in villages across the country, giving women the skills to provide basic medical support to their communities.
She tells me: “We’ve been going door to door, bringing women together under one roof and teaching basic reading and writing to women who’ve never held a pen. The Taliban know we’re doing it, but for now, they’re turning a blind eye. It’s not a grand gesture, but it changes everything for these women. When you see the spark in their eyes as they form letters for the first time, you remember why we can’t give up on education, no matter how dark things seem.”
Their trick is clever diplomacy: they frame each project as a benefit to entire families rather than solely to women. If the Taliban chose not to turn a blind eye, these women could lose everything – offices would shut down, staff would be threatened or arrested, and their entire community would be left without essential services. Despite that risk, they keep going, because for them, giving up isn’t an option.
It’s by forging these local relationships – often with people who are less ideological but more pragmatic – that these organisations manage to operate. Hundreds of women are learning how to sell crafts online; how to raise poultry for profit; how to use their lands to farm and support their livelihoods. A few hours a day – or even a week – may seem trivial to the outside world, but for these women, it’s an anchor to cling to.
These small but mighty efforts during the Taliban’s reign are laying the foundation for Afghanistan’s future. Whatever government comes next, these women will be ready with skills and confidence, even if they’re forced to hide it for now. These efforts aren’t rebellious or symbolic; they’re vital. Every sewing machine being used in a back room, each battered laptop booted up in secret, every literacy lesson quietly delivered door to door offers hope.
“I think of the wives, daughters, and sisters that I met across Afghanistan; some of the bravest souls I’ve ever known, now holding each other up in the face of unimaginable odds and forging quiet underground networks of solidarity that defy despair”
These quiet pockets of productivity and resilience are happening because brave women still talk (sometimes tensely) with the de-facto authorities, negotiating what little freedoms they have. I’m under no illusions about the brutality and oppressiveness of the current regime. Yet, in these precarious meetings, women are managing to carve out certain allowances for humanitarian or developmental work. For every small win one woman makes, officially or unofficially, a glimmer of hope for hundreds of others is kept alive.
That’s why I believe that isolating Afghanistan’s citizens and starving the country of international aid or financial ties won’t topple Taliban rule. It will create more suffering for ordinary Afghans, especially women and children, who were already bearing the brunt of poverty before the Taliban’s return.
A broken Afghanistan, cut off from the world, is a recipe for deeper chaos. Almost every woman-led NGO I’ve worked with has the same plea: stay engaged. We need your support to keep our work going – direct support, not funding that disappears into the de-facto authorities’ pockets.
The only way to ensure aid reaches Afghan women-led NGOs is for donors – including foundations, high-net-worth individuals, senior government decision-makers, research organisations and the corporate sector – to directly fund evidence-based grassroots, women-led initiatives, treating them as trusted partners rather than sidelined beneficiaries. They’re there, on the ground, navigating the system day in and day out. They know how to negotiate for safe passage, how to quietly expand a programme without drawing hostile attention.
I understand that outsiders are understandably uneasy about sending money into a country governed by an oppressive regime. But a blanket freeze on humanitarian aid or development funding – often imposed through broad sanctions and isolating the country – only punishes the innocent and does nothing to moderate the Taliban, who continue to receive financial support through illicit trade, drug trafficking, taxation on aid, and backing from sympathetic states and private networks.
Humanitarian relief alone isn’t enough. Yes, we must keep people alive in the short term, make sure they’re fed, cared for, sheltered. But we also must invest directly in women and girls because it’s critical for fostering a more stable society, whether the Taliban stays in power another year or another decade.
Of course, you may say, “What good can these tiny grassroots efforts do in the face of such oppression?” But by strengthening these seedling initiatives, we ensure that when Afghanistan’s politics shift again – as they inevitably will – we won’t be starting from zero. We’ll have some skilled, literate women ready to lead their communities who have managed to defy the Taliban’s determination to keep them down.
I often think back to that bright February morning in Kabul, remembering how naive we were to think nothing would stop the progress we had made. But I also remember how relentless Afghan women can be in the face of hopelessness. When they want to learn, when they want to feed their families, when they want to carve out a space for their daughters, they will claw and persist, even at great personal risk. The question for those of us who hold some measure of power – donors, leaders, governments, journalists, everyday citizens – is whether we’ll choose to stand in solidarity with that tenacious spirit or look away.
We owe it to the women of Afghanistan – women like Marzia and Shakiba, who have refused to let a harsh regime define their futures. We owe it to the next generation of Afghan girls, waiting for the door to open a crack to give them everything they need to slip through it and find ways to exist as human beings.
I’m certain there’s a new sunrise waiting. When that moment arrives, the women of Afghanistan will be ready, armed not just with survival instincts but with the know-how to build something lasting from the rubble. Let us help them hold the line until then.
*Names have been changed to protect identities
This article originally appeared on The Independent
