Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

My name is Zuhal, and I am from Afghanistan. My family belongs to one of the country’s persecuted minority groups, people the Taliban call their “direct enemies”. From a young age, my sisters and I believed that women’s voices must be heard and that every woman deserves freedom and dignity. We worked for women’s rights and democracy, knowing it could cost us our lives.

Because of my own work as a human rights advocate, I survived a suicide bombing that killed several of my colleagues. After the Taliban banned women from working, I fled to Canada. I am safe now, but my beloved sisters Frozan and Wernita are still trapped and living in unimaginable fear.

  • Frozan dedicated her life to journalism and media production, amplifying the voices of Afghan women and children who have none. Her work was dangerous even before the Taliban takeover. She lost four colleagues in a brutal attack, but she never stopped fighting for truth.

    When the Taliban returned to power, Frozan became a direct target. Death threats forced her to move repeatedly. Her husband, a professional coach for women’s and girls’ sports, was also marked for punishment. While seven months pregnant with twins, Frozan witnessed the Taliban kidnapping and violently beating her husband. When she tried to protect him, she was struck and hospitalized with premature labor. Both babies died within a week.

    As she lay in the hospital grieving her children, the Taliban seized their home and possessions. With nowhere to go, Frozan took refuge in my sister Wernita’s house. But safety did not last long.

  • Wernita is a mother of six children, five daughters and one son. She worked for NGOs as a women’s rights activist and as a tailor to feed her children. For years she fought for girls’ education and freedom despite constant threats.

    When the Taliban seized power, they confiscated her home, car, and bank account. Her children went hungry, cried for food, to go to school and to go outside to play. Wernita could only hide them. Under the crushing stress, she fell into severe depression and panic attacks, but there was no escape.

    After Frozan was discharged from the hospital and discovered that the Taliban had taken her home, she had nowhere to go, no money, no belongings, nothing. Desperate and heartbroken, she and her husband went to Wernita’s house, and both families tried to survive together in Wernita’s small home. They lived in silence, curtains drawn, terrified that every knock on the door could mean death.

  • The Taliban discovered where they were hiding and demanded that Wernita’s 13-year-old daughter be given to them for marriage, threatening to take her by force.

    That night was the most terrifying of their lives. The children sobbed quietly as my sisters packed what little they could carry. Staying meant losing a child forever.

    With the help of a friend, both families fled illegally across the border into Pakistan. They now share a single borrowed room in Peshawar, hiding without legal documents or refugee status.

    Life in Pakistan is a different kind of prison. Frozan is ill, but neither she nor Wernita can visit a doctor. They fear being kidnapped by police, detained, or deported back to Afghanistan, where certainly violence awaits. Every sound terrifies the children. They live day to day, hungry and terrified, knowing that at any moment they could be discovered.

    My sisters risked everything for freedom, democracy, and the rights of Afghan women. Today those very beliefs put their lives, and their children’s futures, at deadly risk. They have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and their safety, yet they still hold on to hope.

  • We are proceeding with a sponsorship application. Myself along with a group of individuals are raising funds to support the application. Please join us in helping bring Frozan and Wernita, and her children to safety in Canada. Your support could save their lives.