Afghan academic rebuilds life in Italy, dreams of returning | Lifestyle

ROME (AP) — Batool Haidari was once a outstanding professor of sexology at a Kabul college earlier than the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She taught blended lessons of female and male college students, and helped sufferers combating gender identification points.

Her husband owned a carpet manufacturing unit, and collectively they did their greatest to offer an excellent schooling for his or her 18-year-old son and two daughters aged 13 and eight.

That snug life got here to an abrupt halt on Aug. 15, 2021, when the previous insurgents who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam swept again into energy following a expensive two-decade U.S.-led marketing campaign to remake the nation.

Haidari, 37, was among the many many ladies who fled the Taliban, fearing a return to the practices of their earlier rule within the late Nineties, together with largely barring women and girls from schooling and work. She reached Rome on the finish of 2021, after a daring escape by way of Pakistan aided by Italian volunteers who organized for her and her household to be hosted within the Italian capital’s suburbs.

She is amongst 1000’s of Afghani girls in search of to take care of an energetic social position within the nations which have taken them in. Haidari and her husband are learning Italian whereas being financially supported by varied associations. She retains in contact with feminist organizations again dwelling and tries to take care of contact with a few of her sufferers by way of the web.

“Being alive is already a type of resistance,” she stated, including that she desires her kids to contribute to the way forward for Afghanistan, the place she is certain her household will return someday.

“When my son handed the examination to entry the school of Drugs at a college in Rome, for me it was excellent news,” she stated, throughout a commute to her Italian lessons in central Rome. “As a result of if I got here to a European nation, it was primarily for the way forward for my kids.”

After they overran Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban initially promised to respect girls’s and minorities’ rights. As an alternative, they steadily imposed a ban on women’ schooling past sixth grade, saved girls away from most fields of employment, and compelled them to put on head-to-toe clothes in public.

Haidari tried to remain in Kabul along with her household after the Taliban took over. She grew to become an outspoken activist of the Afghanistan Ladies’s Political Participation Community to combat for ladies’s schooling, work and political involvement.

However the dangers quickly grew to become too excessive. Haidari was not solely an informed feminine activist, but additionally a member of the Hazara ethnic group.

The Hazara minority has been a frequent goal of violence because the Taliban takeover. Most are Shiite Muslims, despised and focused by Sunni militants just like the Islamic State group, and discriminated towards by many within the Sunni majority nation.

Haidari acquired dying threats for her analysis on sexual abuse of youngsters in Afghan society, and in December 2021 determined to depart. She crossed to Pakistan along with her household, and an Italian journalist, Maria Grazia Mazzola, helped her get on a airplane from Pakistan to Italy.

“We heard that Taliban had been capturing and looking out homes very near their hiding place,” Mazzola stated. “We had been frantically in contact with the Italian embassy in Pakistan, with confidential contacts in Afghanistan, and we determined collectively that they needed to change their hiding place each three days.”

The Italian authorities evacuated greater than 5,000 Afghans on army planes proper after the Taliban takeover. Later, a community of Italian feminists, Catholic and Evangelical Church buildings and volunteers like Mazzola saved organizing humanitarian corridors and arrange hospitality in Italy all through the next yr.

Mazzola, who works for Italian public RAI TV and is an professional on Islamic fundamentalism, created a community of associations to host 70 Afghans, principally Hazara girls activists and their households.

Now that the refugees are in Italy and steadily getting asylum, Mazzola stated, the precedence is to safe for them official recognition of their college levels or different {qualifications} that may assist them discover dignified employment.

“A girl like Batool (Haidari) can’t work as a cleaner in a college. It might be a waste for our society too. She is a psychologist and deserves to proceed working as such,” Mazzola stated.

Haidari agreed. Whereas she stated she misses the streets and alleys of Kabul, and the straightforward life she used to have, “most of all I miss the truth that in Afghanistan I used to be a way more helpful particular person.”

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