Estimated read time: 7-8 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Frozan Hatami never wanted to leave her home in Afghanistan. But when her activism increasingly put her in the path of the Taliban's wrath, fleeing felt like the only safe option.
"It was really difficult to leave everything — your family, friends — behind and leave your country," Hatami said. "We just forced ourselves and convinced ourselves that we have to leave everything. That point was the most difficult and scary for me."
She shows a stoic strength as she recounts her last day in the country and how difficult it was to say goodbye to parents, especially as an only child. To this day, she doesn't know when she will see them again.
Hatami is among a handful of Afghan activists who arrived in Utah earlier this year after receiving death threats from the Taliban for advocating for women's and human rights.
They asked that their specific routes be withheld to protect the safety of others fleeing the country; however, each took a unique path out of Afghanistan before meeting as a group in another country while they waited for their U.S. visas to be processed.
Some flew out of the country with the company of a male chaperon. Others crossed land borders on foot, relying on strangers who were crossing at the same time to pose as their male chaperones. One woman made the journey while pregnant. Some made multiple attempts to leave, and many still have family members within the country.
"Leaving Afghanistan is also not easy. … Overall it is a very overwhelming experience and highly risky, too. You have to be lucky and very cautious to cross the border," said activist Pakiza Munir. "When I had to say goodbye to my family to come to America, I was happy that I will be finally safe but my heart ached because I had to leave my loved ones behind. It was very tough. We cried our eyes out."
Activist Shamail Tawana Nasiri left with only a pair of clothes and her computer.
"I just told my family that I'm leaving. I didn't even share it with my movement's members. So it was a secret because of the security issue," Nasiri said.
Following the U.S.'s rushed pullout from Afghanistan, many Afghan allies were stranded in the country. Tens of thousands of Afghans have since resettled in the U.S., but virtually all have been left without a clear pathway to legally stay and thousands more are waiting outside the country for their visas to be processed.
"For Afghans, it's a big challenge at this moment. Most countries just turn their face and shut down the visa process for Afghans," said Crystal Bayat, an Afghan activist living in Utah whose nonprofit, Crystal Bayat Foundation, helped organize the group's journey to Utah along with the Nazarene Fund and the Utah Attorney General's Office.
It's a point of frustration for the women, who say the U.S. and international community largely turned their backs on Afghans once the Taliban took over.
"My heart breaks when I see how these Western countries just shut the doors in the face of the Afghans that trusted them, supported them and protected them for 20 years in Afghanistan," activist Laila Basim said through a translator.
Afghans in Utah protest 2 years of Taliban rule in their home country
Afghan refugees in Utah on Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary since the fall of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.Living under Taliban rule
Each of the activists had normal lives before Kabul fell. They pursued higher education, worked in government or for humanitarian organizations and dreamed of a better future for their country.
"Everything collapsed suddenly and it was like the whole sky shattered on my heart. It was a feeling like that," Hatami said. "They are an extreme group, they are against all women's rights, so it was too difficult to pursue all the dreams I had before."
For the first month, Hatami said she did nothing, struggling with feelings of uselessness. Then something clicked.
"After the takeover, I found it was a very bad feeling to feel like you're good for nothing. And then I thought (starting my civic activities was) the very least that I can do for myself, for the girls who are like my age and they cannot raise their voices, they cannot do something for themselves or for the nation," she said.
The takeover was a dark day for the entire country, but life under the regime has been particularly brutal for women and girls who are banned from attending school beyond sixth grade, holding public office and working most jobs outside of the home. The Taliban has also mandated that women wear head-to-toe clothing and be accompanied by a mahram, or male chaperone.
Munir, Hatami, Basim and Shamail Tawana Nasiri were vocal in their opposition to the Taliban. Their efforts included organizing dozens of protests, opening a library for women and girls and founding a news organization to raise awareness about the situation in Afghanistan.
The women took safety measures, such as regularly moving homes. But those measures did not prevent them from receiving frequent threats to themselves and their families or from being detained or beaten by the Taliban.
Basim suffered a miscarriage following one such beating during a protest. She said discovering she was pregnant again was a driving force in her decision to leave Afghanistan. Prior to leaving, she said she moved seven times in two years after the Taliban searched and destroyed her home.
"My dream is that my baby has a good life here and is a helpful person in the future for his country," she said through an interpreter. "It will always be a pain in my chest to remember these days that I had to be away from my mom, away from my siblings, away from my husband just because we are standing for the right things."
Continuing the work
Arriving in Utah was a bittersweet moment for the activists. It was a safe end to a long journey — but the contrast between the freedoms Americans enjoy and the human rights abuses in their own country was overwhelmingly apparent.
"Seeing all the differences, sometimes it's like a little bit disappointing for me. We are living on the same Earth, right?" Hatami said. "We just came out of Afghanistan to continue raising our voices. If we were in Afghanistan, we couldn't do so because the restrictions are increasing on women."
Munir, Hatami, Basim, and Nasiri are each determined to continue their advocacy from Utah. On the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover in August, for example, they held a rally in downtown Salt Lake City. In Afghanistan, they said women protested indoors because doing so on the streets was too dangerous.
Each of the women left behind lives they spent decades building in Afghanistan. But new dreams and plans are starting to take hold as they start from scratch in Utah.
Munir wants to continue her education and dreams of one day opening a school for girls one day. Hatami also plans on pursuing another degree in the hope of one day becoming a politician or businesswoman. Nasiri plans to continue running Farkhunda News, which she founded in 2022 to help spread awareness of the situation in Afghanistan. She hopes to improve the company and make it profitable for several women she has working on the ground in Afghanistan.
"You walk on the street and nobody's going to tell you to walk like this or wear this or do this or do not say this. Here, the moment you step into America, you allow yourself to dream about different stuff," Munir said. "You give yourself the courage to dream. And the dreams are getting bigger the more you see the possibilities every day."
