A story to mark the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and Human Rights Day (26 Nov.-10 Dec.), a reminder of the inalienable right to dignity, equality, and safety.
A journalist in Delhi reflects on the hardships faced by her colleagues in Afghanistan, particularly a woman who received an award in India but was not granted a visa to attend the ceremony – a recognition and a denial that has cost her dearly.
COMMENTARY
By Nilova Roy Chaudhury / Sapan News in collaboration with eShe
An Afghan woman journalist, who must remain unnamed for her personal safety, learnt earlier this year that she had received an international media award in Delhi for her efforts to uphold women’s rights inside Afghanistan. The journalist, whom I will call “Karishma”, was part of a collective of women who strived to keep the world informed about what she and other women have faced since the Taliban assumed power there in August 2021.
Karishma, along with thousands of women, had lived for 20 years in a Taliban-free Afghanistan, since 2001 when the Northern Alliance, a group of Afghan resistance fighters aided by the US and allied forces and supported by India, ousted the previous Taliban regime from power. This had enabled two decades of awakening for Afghanistan’s women.
I met Karishma online when she, along with several of her colleagues, joined South Asian Women in Media (SAWM), a collective of leading women media professionals from eight countries across Southasia.
We nominated Karishma, who lives in Afghanistan, for a media award in India, for courage in performing her professional duties. To our delight, she won the award. When notified about it, she pulled out her passport, looking forward to a brief reprieve outside Kabul from her faceless life.
However, shockingly, India did not grant Karishma a visa to receive the award in Delhi, despite many requests to the Indian government, including from senior SAWM members.
Disappointed and hurt, she hit out at those in India who had nominated her. That India could turn down legitimate visa requests from people like her seemed extremely unfair.
“We do not want charity, we just want a chance,” she told me and other colleagues in India, to our great shame.
The organisation tried to get the award delivered to her in Afghanistan. However, this well-meaning offer only brought her under the Taliban’s critical scrutiny, compromising her personal safety and getting her family members threatened, for receiving recognition abroad for writing the truth about her situation.
I learnt this through an email which really scared me, in which Karishma highlighted how our offers of assistance had made things more difficult for her life and those of the scattered few women who still tried to function as journalists inside Afghanistan.
“On February 5, 2025, I received an email regarding the award we were to receive. As stated in the email, the award was supposed to be delivered to me in Afghanistan through Mr. J…,” she wrote.
“However, since receiving your email, I have personally encountered serious challenges. I am under severe threats from anonymous individuals who appear to be aware of my past work. These threats have significantly escalated, and unknown people have even come to our home in an attempt to arrest us. Currently, my husband and I are living separately in undisclosed locations, far from our family, in order to protect ourselves. This situation has become extremely dangerous, and I am deeply concerned for my safety and the safety of my loved ones.”
I have not heard from Karishma since then. The Taliban have restricted the internet across Afghanistan so that such stories do not filter out.
Meanwhile, astonishingly, though Karishma wasn’t granted a visa, India recently laid out the red carpet for the Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to visit India. In New Delhi, bilateral discussions focused on trade and strategic regional security issues. One can safely assume that the question of Karishma’s security and the Taliban’s efforts to efface women did not enter the discussions.
This is in stark contrast to India’s earlier policies. New Delhi had actively opposed the earlier Taliban regime, 1996 and 2001, and had tacitly supported Ahmed Shah Masood’s Northern Alliance which ousted Taliban 1.0.
Today, India’s outreach to the current Taliban regime has made matters worse for women in Afghanistan, as they try to cope between a ruling regime that is stifling their existence because of their gender, and an international community that appears to have forgotten and doesn’t care that they lurk in the shadows.
I have been unable to trace Karishma or any of the others in the SAWM Afghanistan group; they seem to have vanished.
Even among journalists who managed to flee in 2021, fear remains and a reluctance to talk. They are bitter at being forced to leave their country; they feel guilt for leaving family members behind; and they are anxious that family members may be punished for anything they say that may be seen as critical of the regime.
After four years in power, the Taliban regime 2.0 has complete control of the troubled, landlocked nation, leaving the international community with little choice but to deal with them.
But for Afghanistan’s beleaguered women like Karishma, it is important that humanity worldwide retain focus on their stories.
Nilova Roy Chaudhury is a New Delhi-based senior journalist who focuses on foreign policy issues. She is a Senior Fellow with the think tank Women In Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP).
This is a Sapan News syndicated feature published in collaboration with eShe.
Editor’s note: Zan Times editor Zahra Nader, has written to Sapan News categorically stating that “Karishma” did not work for Zan Times as originally mentioned in the article. The reference has been removed. We regret the error.
*Note on Southasia as one word: We use ‘Southasia’ as one word, “seeking to restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation states” – Himal Southasian
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