Until August, Farishta was an influential prosecutor who exercised her power for a cause. She prosecuted criminals, Taliban militants, corrupt bureaucrats, and men who beat women and children.
Today, 27-year-old Farishta is in hiding. Like a fugitive on the run, she changes her location often. For her safety, we have changed her name.
Originally from Afghanistan’s south-eastern Paktia province, Farishta was among those Afghan women who obtained professional success in the years after the Taliban was defeated, challenging the country’s male-dominated and ultra-conservative society.
Five years ago, under the previous government, she became a prosecutor in Afghanistan’s Attorney-General’s office. Part of her job was “prosecuting and getting sentences for those who committed rape, murder and domestic violence”, she told the BBC from a safe house in Afghanistan. It was a “challenging but satisfying job”, she said.
But as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan in recent months, before seizing the country, they freed prisoners along the way, including thousands of hardened criminals and Islamist militants.
Among those let go by the crusading Taliban was Mohamad Gol, who faced charges of planning suicide bomb attacks. Farishta had painstakingly gathered evidence against Gol and successfully prosecuted him, putting him behind bars for what should have been a 20-year sentence.
Days after the Taliban took over Kabul, Mohammed Gol called her, Farishta said. “He said he was coming after me to take revenge, and I cannot hide anywhere.”
Since then, she has been on the move. With no salary, she is finding it difficult to make ends meet. Farishta and her colleagues say the Taliban are opposed to women working as prosecutors and judges and they want to keep most women away from the workplace, as they did during their rule through the late 1990s.
Women like Farishta have good reason to be afraid. In January, two women judges of the Afghan Supreme Court were shot dead in Kabul – part of a wave of targeted killings widely blamed on the Taliban. And two legal officials who worked in the Afghan Justice Ministry have been killed in Kabul in recent weeks in what are believed to be revenge attacks.
[…]
