"They sold Afghanistan to the Taliban"

Zarifa Ghafari says she realized she could no longer trust her driver when Taliban militants tried to blow up her car with a rocket launcher.

A year earlier, in March 2020, she was targeted by killers after the driver, Masum, parked his car and went to run some errands. After that, she hired an armored vehicle and five bodyguards for her 45-kilometer journey from Kabul to Maidan Shar, where she worked as mayor. On the day of the rocket launcher attack, one of the bodyguards drove her and her fiance while Masum transported the rest of the team. Despite her orders to stay behind as backup, he overtook her vehicle.

"So we were driving abnormally fast ... Then we were attacked again and we needed a clear way to get out," she said. It was Masum's job to do that. "He should have told the bodyguards to come and clear the way. Or he could have cleared the way with his car. But instead, he drove in front of me, he blocked my car."

This is just one of the deadly situations that are an integral part of the life of young Zarifa Ghafari, who became a sensation at the age of 24 when she was appointed the chief official of the conservative province of Wardak. This Afghan politician-turned-activist is a product of America's longest war: an educated woman who overcame family and tradition to gain a position in power, and who survived, according to the FT.

The rocket launcher attack is one of the six times she avoided death. Her hands are full of burn scars caused by a suspicious gas explosion in her apartment in 2019. As a little girl, she was seriously wounded twice on the way to school by suicide bombers. In November 2020, her father, a commander in the then Western-backed Afghan army, was killed outside her family home in Kabul.

"The terrorist attacks made me Afghan," she wrote in her recent memoir, Zarif. However, she told a British newspaper reporter: "I don't remember being scared ... I really wasn't."

Zarifa says her driver's story shows why many of her countrymen ended up joining Islamist insurgents against the government in Kabul, adding to the chaos that ensued with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. When the Taliban took over Wardak two months earlier, she stopped to hire Masum, partly because she could no longer return to that province, and he was bitter.

"His story went from being so proud to work with me to 'The government is not doing well' to 'I feel abandoned' and then he was praising the Taliban, meeting with them, entertaining and begging."

Ghafari, who is in London to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in her country and the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule, studied at Punjab University in Chandigarh, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, for which she received an Afghan government scholarship at the age of 16.

She was born in Kabul in 1994, the eldest of eight children. Her parents sometimes supported her and sometimes resisted her going to school. Before 2001, since girls' education was forbidden under the first Taliban regime, they sent her to a secret school, risking their lives. After the US-led invasion, Zarif's father was transferred to Paktia, a Taliban stronghold near Pakistan. There, her parents forbade her to attend classes after she nearly died in a suicide attack on the school.

This country is not in question, but all the things that have been imposed on us. My mom lost her father when she was three years old, and I lost my father when I was 26 ... We have been going through the same story for decades.

She attended classes in secret and ended up in the hospital after being caught up in a bomb attack that killed the provincial governor. Upon her return to Kabul, her parents refused to let her go to Kost University, in eastern Afghanistan, because it would mean her living alone. She was ready to give up until she found out about a scholarship in India. When she got her, her father relented.

After graduating in economics, she was able to stay in Chandigarh, a city she loves for its architectural order and cleanliness. But despite the danger, she decided to return home because she felt a responsibility to give something back to her country.

"That's where I belong," she told the FT. "When I lost my dad, for the first few seconds I was cursing myself. I was cursing my family, my people. I thought, 'What the hell is this country like?' people in this country. The issue is not this country, but all the things that have been imposed on us. My mother lost her father when she was three years old, and I when I was 26 ... We have been going through the same story for decades."

About two years after returning from India, Ghafari applied for the post of mayor in Wardak, her father's province. She beat the other candidates - all men - in the written and oral tests. But her appointment, signed by President Ashraf Ghani, whose government has grown increasingly powerless and isolated in Kabul, sparked violent protests. She was only able to take office after nine months.

During her tenure, Ghafari continued to stir up trouble by simply following the law, trying to force business owners to pay license fees and firing corrupt civil servants. It fought what it called the "land mafia" by sending bulldozers to demolish illegal buildings in Maidan Shar. Most, however, remained out of reach in the Taliban's rural strongholds. By spring 2021, insurgents were conducting nightly raids near her office. Ghafari was transferred to the Ministry of Defense in Kabul.

When the Taliban seized Kabul in the chaotic summer of 2021, Ghafari used connections abroad to fly her family to Germany. Until then, she had received the International Courage Award from the US State Department headed by Mike Pompeo. Six months later, as a refugee in Dusseldorf in search of a mission, she decided to return home.

Without telling her family - except her fiance Bashir Mohammadi, who fled with her to Germany - she received assurances from the Taliban administration that she would not be arrested at the airport. The FT estimates that the new rulers in Kabul were probably lenient as they tried to get the West to lift sanctions and release billions of dollars in reserves (sanctions are still in place). However, it could have been a trap. Ghafari, who was traveling with a film crew (Netflix aired a documentary about her life last month) and a British journalist who co-authored her memoir, had expected her international profile to protect her. When she landed in Kabul, she drove directly to her father's grave and posted a picture on social media.

"It was like, I'm back home. I'm here. I'm here for my people and my country. There's nothing political. I'm so happy to be here. That's it."

She described the joy her return brought to the family and former colleagues who remained behind. But her trip also sparked controversy among Afghan exiles who felt she was compromising with the new regime. "I left my country for my family. And when I felt they were safe, I came back," she explained. "And I faced so much hatred, especially from the US, UK or Europe ... Can you imagine? ... They called me a Taliban!" She added that she always says that she has not left Afghanistan forever.

"It's not a question of whether I'll ever come back ... It's my home. I don't have to explain why I left."

During the few days after returning to her native country, she discovered the "Taliban twilight zone". The poverty was shocking, and women's rights were massively revoked (the Taliban recently banned women from public parks and baths, fairs and gyms). But certain aspects of life, especially security, have improved for ordinary citizens of Kabul. In her memoirs, she quotes an uncle who said: "If we had foreign support, this regime would have been better than Ghani's government."

Zarifa talks harshly about two decades of American intervention. "It was not a 'war on terror'. It was a war to produce more terrorism. US forces destroyed entire villages. And if you asked them, they would say, 'There were one or two Taliban there'."

The Afghan activist believes that constant foreign interference has contributed to the long-term troubles of her homeland. Ghafari describes Washington's policy towards Afghanistan since the Soviet Union invaded that country in 1979 as a "game". It consists of inciting ethnic tribes and local warlords against each other, and culminated in Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban in February 2020 ahead of the US withdrawal. "We were full of hope. And then the Taliban rose again and they signed an agreement with the Taliban. They sold Afghanistan to the Taliban."

It was not a 'war on terror'. It was a war to produce more terrorism. Entire villages were destroyed by US forces. And if you had asked them, they would have said: 'There were one or two Taliban there'

She assessed that the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, in an American drone attack in Kabul in July shows that the game is still going on. The US not only supports the Mujahideen who are forced into exile, but, she claims, encourages the activities of Isis-K, a jihadist movement that threatens the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.

For the "biggest mistake" of Washington in 2001, Ghafari considers bringing the early leaders to power. They helped the Americans push the Taliban into the mountains, but when they became part of the government, they recreated local fiefdoms, engaged in illegal business and encouraged corruption, she says. Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai, president until 2014, earned the epithet "Mayor of Kabul" as it became increasingly unsafe for him to travel outside the capital.

It is unfair to compare Gani with Zelenski

Ghafari points out that it is unfair to compare President Ghani, who fled Kabul as the Taliban were about to seize the capital, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who remained in Kiev after the Russian invasion.

"Ghani was completely alone, telling everyone that a deal with the Taliban meant we would lose everything. But everyone called him a coward," Ghafari said. As part of the US-brokered Doha agreement, the government was to release 5.000 Taliban prisoners. Ghani resisted this. The US stopped sending money.

"The whole world supports Zelensky, including NATO, the USA, Europe," she says. "Millions of dollars are going to that country. In my country, in the last three months (of the US presence), there was no pay for the soldiers."

"The Taliban is a fact," Ghafari writes in his memoirs.

When asked if she intends to cooperate with the regime, she answered: "If the women, my people, trust me at that level, then I'm ready, because someone needs to talk. Someone needs to start it. Someone needs to listen."

The Taliban leadership is divided on the issue of women's education, with the supreme leader opposed, but most Taliban supporters are fine with it, she said.

Struggle with family and tradition

Zarifa Ghafari points out that she always likes to test the limits imposed by her family and society, despite the risks.

She says of her father, with whom she quarreled a lot, that he is "the most important person in her life". "During my childhood, I couldn't understand him. I asked why my brothers were allowed something and I wasn't"?

She recalled that when she sought private schooling after she was not allowed to attend college, she was told the family could not afford it. But two of her brothers received extra tutoring to prepare for the exams.

Gaffari reconciled with her father shortly before he died. He "saw and understood that I could handle everything on my own and that I could make him proud."

Her relationship with her mother, however, remains difficult. "If me and one of my brothers stand in front of my mom, she'll never choose me."

Even outside of Afghanistan, she still struggles against family and tradition. "Today I'm just trying to focus on myself, my life. "I feel like I've sacrificed everything for my family. That's enough now. I don't do that anymore. I return to my mission, to my country, to my work, to my future."