“It was morning, I was looking out of the window from my home. Everything was so normal; the traffic, a long line of girls with black uniforms, full of flowers, and umbrellas to save them from the sun. They were going to school, busy talking to each other. The beauty parlour in front of my house was open. Then suddenly in the afternoon, around 1 o’clock I was looking from the same window outside. I still remember how the city looked; the traffic was completely derailed, everyone was running, the girls were rushing out of the school building, the beauty parlour in front of my house was locked. Everything had changed. Even the sky was full of dust. The sun was not that bright anymore.”
This is how Armaghan Chamkanai, 32 years old now, remembers August 15 2021, the day the Taliban captured Kabul. Armaghan has been a political and women’s rights activist for a decade. Back in 2018, she was a candidate for the Afghan parliament elections, representing Kabul. That’s not her life anymore.
She currently lives in Lisbon, where she arrived one month after that horrible day in August 2021. She is living here with her husband and her two kids, a son of 9 years old and a daughter of 2.
Armaghan says that for one entire year after they arrived in Portugal, she was just healing from all those terrible things she had lived. It felt safe for her to be in Portugal. She describes Lisbon as a lovely city: “My kids are growing up very well here. They are enjoying it. It’s very peaceful”, she says.
However, she knows that she won’t be here forever.
She wants to return: “When I feel just 1% safe in Afghanistan, I will return. It’s my country. It’s my people and those people need us. We have to go back.”
She describes the horrible situation of women there. For almost three years, girls have not been allowed to go to school, have no education, women had to close all their businesses, and have been banished from all sectors of society. Armaghan describes: “Everything we built in small, small steps. They destroyed it in just one blink of an eye.”
“Women are waking up and don’t know what is going to happen to them during the day. A group of terrorists, bearded extremists, gunmen, are ruling a big country. They have taken 40 million people’s lives. They go to people’s houses, they rape their teenage girls, they are taking money, they are forcing marriages, they are arresting women from the streets, and they sexually harass them. They can do whatever they want and the world is silently watching them, or even supporting them financially, and politically. The world is giving them platforms, letting them speak, trying to normalize this absurd situation”, she accuses.
The current situation in Afghanistan does not leave Armaghan any option but to speak up. Women in Afghanistan cannot speak, but Armaghan can speak for them. She says: “Afghan women need support. I am trying my best to create a community of women around the world to do some work. Individually we are not so strong, but collectively, we will have more influence.”
In Portugal, Afghan women find each other. Armaghan herself helped refugees from Afghanistan with documentation and translating into English. The people who come here face many challenges, “but”, she says, “they are doing well, still so much better than in Afghanistan. They find peace and safety. Their kids go to school.”
There is a big Afghan community in Lisbon and Armaghan is in contact with many people in similar situations. “The people in Lisbon are supportive, they stay with us and help us, giving us space in society, they are trying to let us integrate. I am so thankful for that.”
Young, but strong
Armaghan says she was an activist from a young age, trying to improve the situation of women. She grew up in Badakhshan, in the North of Afghanistan. When she was in school, female political candidates came to her school to talk about their programs and work. She remembers: “At that time I imagined myself in that place. I was telling my classmates and my friends that one day I would be there, I would do those campaigns. And I did.”
She grew up in a very unsafe situation during the war with the Taliban from 2001 onwards. She remembers the unsafety during her youth vividly. “When you got out in the morning you never knew if you would come back home at the end of the day. Anywhere and anytime, there was the possibility of a suicide attack. It was not exceptional to see cars burning after a blast, or ambulance workers dealing with dead bodies”, she says.
At the University of Kabul, she started writing articles and criticising national politics on women’s rights, she participated in national and international debates and took every opportunity to spread her message.
She knows she is privileged, she comes from an educated family that respects the rights of a girl, while most women in Afghanistan don’t have access to basic human rights: no access to education, work, health care, and not allowed to express their values. She says this injustice was the driving force behind her activism and what drew her to become a political candidate. Armaghan announced herself in 2017 as an independent candidate for the elections of the Afghan parliament.
At the time, Armaghan noticed that women were quite prominent in Afghan society. Women ran businesses, women spoke up, and many Members of the Parliament were women. But Armaghan’s campaign, mainly focused on women’s rights, was unacceptable for men. “I was harassed through social media, and every day there was new propaganda on social media targeted at me. I had no guarantee of security, but I refused to keep quiet because of those threats.”
During the 2018 elections for the Afghan Parliament, Armaghan was 26, one of the youngest candidates. “I feel so good because I don’t know how I did that. I was sensitive, but I was strong at the same time. Because I had my purpose. If you want to bring changes and work for women in your country, you have to be strong.”
Armaghan describes her campaign as successful. However, there was a lot of turmoil around the procedure and results of the election. Scientific research by Thomas H. Johnson and Ronald J. Barnhart published in 2020, about the chaos, confusion and fraud during the 2018 election in Afghanistan shows the lack of democracy in the procedures of these elections. Armaghan mentions this situation as a reason for her to remove herself from the list.
She stepped back, but she didn’t stop her activism. On the contrary.
Armaghan and her friends were very active during the peace negotiation with the Taliban in 2021: “We were speaking, we were demonstrating, we were protesting, we were organizing, we were trying our best to speak on behalf of the whole country, on behalf of women in our society.”
The most horrible day
But then, it happened, the Taliban took over Kabul. The most horrible day of Armaghan’s life, and that of many Afghan women. Armaghan says: “I will never forget that day. Every time I think about that day, my heart breaks again.”
From the moment she heard the gun firing start, she knew it. “I was broken inside and full of anger and emotions. I couldn’t even cry. Everything was suddenly so changed. I looked at Facebook I saw the Taliban cars with that white flag on the main avenue of Kabul.”
“That heartbreak, that hopelessness, I have never ever experienced that before.”
Armaghan was on the blacklist of the Taliban because of her activism. Her husband was a cabinet member of the government at that time and called her from his office and said: “Take the kids and run, go somewhere safe.” She took both of her kids and went to an apartment that nobody knew about. Armaghan’s husband would arrive there too. He was also targeted by the Taliban because of his position within the government. She left her house with only one pair of clothes. She left everything behind.
They spent a month hiding with their kids. Armaghan and her husband couldn’t go out of the apartment. She couldn’t even turn on the lights during the night because she was afraid the Taliban would find them. Her sisters got out in the evening and brought them food and milk for their baby.
“When I crossed the border of Afghanistan, I felt myself breathing again”
They couldn’t get out of the country from Kabul airport. There were Taliban checkpoints. It wouldn’t be safe. There were so many bomb blasts, the airport was packed with people and it was the warmest month of the year in Afghanistan. She saw videos with the most horrible scenarios possible, including many children victims.
During that month, Armaghan was communicating with different countries, looking for a way to get out of the country. She had some connections with different EU countries because she used to work for European refugee projects that were implemented in Afghanistan. Via a resettlement program of the Portuguese government, she could arrange visas for her and her husband to go to Pakistan.
“I thought back to those days when we were full of ambitions, we wanted to bring changes to the country. I saw a lot of women like me, activistic women, at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I specifically remember one woman, who had a very high position. She was holding her baby like I was. We saw each other, we didn’t speak, but I am sure we felt the same.”
“Everything we built in small, small steps. They destroyed it in just one blink of an eye.” Armaghan calls herself one of the lucky ones because she would make her way out of Afghanistan: “When I crossed the border to Pakistan, I felt myself breathing again, I felt alive. I took a deep breath and said: I made it.”
A history of being held back, a future of hope
In Lisbon, Armaghan is still confronted with moments of pure hopelessness sometimes. “We lost our friends, our families, and very close people in bomb blasts, kidnappings, and harassment. It is very difficult for us. We, as Afghan women, need to have so much perseverance; we always have to take an extra step. We have a history of being held back.”
The moments of hopelessness are never long, she doesn’t allow herself: “I have to keep that hope inside me because this shouldn’t be our destiny. We deserve the best, Afghan women deserve the best.”
During the time Armaghan was hidden in the secret apartment in Kabul, she started writing down her story. Everything she experienced from a young girl till then. There was so much to tell that it would become a book. It was tough for her to write this book; every time she edited, or when she tells her story again, she feels like she is there again at home in Kabul, looking out of her window, seeing the panic of the people on the street, seeing the sky turning grey. She relives the moment, the anger, the broken feeling inside.
She finished her book anyway. She continued writing, no matter how difficult it was for her. Because it aligns with her motivation to speak up and spread the story. The book is ready, she only needs to find a publisher.
Armaghan’s story of combat, struggle, perseverance, character, and hope needs to be told, needs to be spread. All with the mission of fighting for the freedom of Afghan women. She continues her activism with that one dream in the back of her mind: “waking up one day in Afghanistan again, back at home in Kabul, seeing the dust dissolve, and the sun shining bright again. The beauty parlour in front of her house is open.”
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