30 May 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Over the past 15 years, Bibi Jan has already endured the unimaginable pain of losing four of her children due to malnutrition and inadequate medical facilities. She is now deeply anxious about the health of two of her three surviving children.
I met the 30-year-old in December 2024 at the Zabul Provincial Hospital. I found her sitting beside her two sick children, aged six and three, her face etched with worry. She spoke in a trembling voice.
“Each of [my children] passed away after reaching six months or one year of age,” she told me. “Now, my two other children are also sick. I brought them to this hospital for treatment. The doctors have admitted them. I am staying here while my husband visits us during the day and returns home at night.”
Bibi got married when she was only 15 to a man who was 15 years her senior. “My father gave me away in marriage when I did not consent,” she said. Since then, she has given birth nine times, but only one daughter and two sons have survived.
The women and children’s ward of the hospital was so overcrowded that it was nearly impossible to find any space. Every bed was occupied, and some patients were sharing a single cot or lying on the floor, waiting desperately for medical attention.
Sitting next to Bibi was another woman, 37-year-old Fatima, who had brought her two-and-a-half-year-old child in for treatment. “Due to a lack of sufficient food, my children suffer from malnutrition and one of them is severely ill,” she said. “We barely have anything to eat at home, let alone access to proper medical care.”
The tragic accounts of Bibi and Fatima are just two of countless stories that reflect the dire humanitarian crisis in the southern province of Zabul. Women and children in this province face life-threatening health risks daily. The Zabul Provincial Hospital, which is the only major healthcare centre in the region, is grappling with critical shortages of medicine and medical equipment.
One of the doctors at the hospital, who preferred to remain anonymous, described the grim reality of their struggle: “We are trying to save patients’ lives with the minimal resources available, but we lack adequate medicine and equipment. Foreign aid is not distributed properly, and most of it goes to specific Taliban-affiliated groups. Ordinary people, especially women and children, are deprived of this aid.”
The drastic reduction in international aid following recent political changes has plunged Afghanistan’s healthcare system into an unprecedented crisis. This includes both the reduction of government healthcare assistance within the country since the Taliban’s takeover and recent reductions in foreign aid, particularly from Donald Trump’s administration in the USA and his cuts to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding.
Organisations that once provided crucial support to medical centres in Zabul have either suspended their assistance or significantly reduced the resources they provide. Meanwhile, the Taliban lacks the capabilities and infrastructure to manage this growing catastrophe, and has actively enforced policies that make healthcare access harder.
A worsening nationwide problem
According to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Afghanistan has a maternal mortality rate that is nearly three times the global average – for every 100,000 births, 600 women die.
In a recent report, the OCHA warned that this year nearly half of Afghanistan’s population – or 22.9 million people – will require humanitarian assistance just to survive. The report also stated that 14.8 million people, more than a third of the country’s population, will face acute food insecurity by early 2025.
This crisis extends far beyond Zabul. The Abu Ali Sina Balkhi Provincial Hospital in Balkh is also overwhelmed by the growing number of patients and the worsening economic situation.
At about 4pm one afternoon, a sudden commotion erupted in the overcrowded hallways of the hospital. A 42-year-old man, visibly pale and weak, was lying on a stretcher. He was a roadside vendor who had earned no income that day. His blood sugar levels had spiked dangerously high, leaving him unable to move.
His 12-year-old son and a coworker, both visibly distraught, had rushed him to the hospital. Despite the doctors’ immediate attention, his condition was too severe for him to be saved. About 20 minutes later, a doctor’s voice emerged from his office: “The patient has passed away.”
Hospital officials then turned to his young son and requested that he contacted a family elder to collect the body.
Many of the patients seeking treatment in hospitals across the country have lost their jobs, struggle with chronic illnesses exacerbated by economic hardship, or suffer from the psychological toll of Taliban rule. Additionally, cases of suicide among women, driven by social issues such as domestic violence and forced marriages, have been steadily increasing.
Taliban restrictions further endanger healthcare access
The OCHA has expressed serious concerns over the increasing restrictions imposed by the Taliban on women’s employment and education in the healthcare sector. These policies have drastically limited access to essential medical services for mothers and children across Afghanistan.
According to the OCHA, the country’s economy has shrunk by nearly a third since August 2021. The ongoing political crisis, an inefficient financial system, severe cuts in development budgets and Taliban-imposed restrictions have seriously damaged the country’s ability to deliver basic services.
The organisation highlighted the alarming maternal mortality rate during childbirth in particular, emphasising that the Taliban’s restrictions on women working in healthcare have made access to medical care increasingly difficult.
In addition to these policies, last year the Taliban also banned women from studying in medical institutes, further depleting the already inadequate number of female healthcare workers and stopping them from being able to train in professions such as nursing, midwifery and dentistry. These were some of the only educational avenues left for women.
The desperate need for female doctors
In Badakhshan province, women are particularly affected by the shortage of female doctors. Fatima, a 24-year-old woman, expressed her deep concerns: “I always accompany my relatives who come from remote areas to the central hospital in Badakhshan because they don’t know the way. The situation is truly worrying. There are so many patients but not enough female doctors. We must wait for hours just to get seen by one.”
She recounted the harrowing experience of one of her neighbours who suffered severe complications due to a lack of doctors.
“Several specialised doctors we had have all left the country,” she said. “My neighbour had to undergo surgery in the absence of specialists, but due to severe bleeding she had to go through another surgery within a week. She nearly died.”
Dr Noshin Gohar Karimi, who works at Faizabad Provincial Hospital, voiced similar concerns on his Facebook page: “The workload in Faizabad Provincial Hospital has exceeded the capacity of the staff. Unfortunately, due to a lack of budget, increasing bed capacity and staff recruitment are not possible. The hospital was originally designed for 128 beds, but today more than 310 patients are admitted. In the paediatric ward, which has only 30 beds, 120 sick children and their mothers are currently being treated.”
The healthcare workforce crisis
The shortage of medicines and lack of funding remain among the most pressing challenges in Afghanistan’s healthcare system. A nurse at a government-run, public hospital in Kabul highlighted the ongoing crisis: “We used to have more staff, but over the past two years the workforce has decreased significantly. Now, one person has to do the work of several people and, as a result, patients do not receive adequate care. In addition to that, doctors and nurses face persistent delays in their salaries.”
She added: “Before the Taliban took over, medical equipment was already scarce but, after that, even that small supply stopped. Many machines have become old and worn out, and hospital officials say they have no budget to replace them.”
A nurse at a private hospital in Kabul also reported severe staff shortages in various departments. “There is a lack of personnel in all sections. In the nursing department, especially, we do not have enough staff and are forced to do the work of several people alone, while our salaries have also been reduced.”
With a collapsing healthcare system, increasing restrictions on women and dwindling international aid, Afghanistan faces a healthcare catastrophe that threatens the lives of millions.
Additional reporting by Rukhshana Media reporters
16 May 2025 | Afghanistan, Africa, Asia and Pacific, Azerbaijan, Europe and Central Asia, Mali, Middle East and North Africa, New Zealand, News and features, Palestine, United Kingdom
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the potential suspension of three Māori MPs, and the dissolution of political parties in Mali.
Cultural suspension: Māori MPs face suspension for performing the Haka in parliament
In November 2024, an act of protest in New Zealand’s parliament went viral on social media when opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke initiated a traditional Haka dance during session to demonstrate against a controversial bill concerning Māori people’s rights. Opposition party members joined in the ceremonial group dance, leading to a striking scene in which a copy of the bill was ripped in two.
The bill aimed to drastically change the way that the Treaty of Waitangi, a founding document of New Zealand that has been crucial in upholding Māori rights, was interpreted. Critics and Māori rights activists claimed that this bill undermined New Zealand’s founding document – and following a nine-day hīkoi (peaceful protest) last year, the bill was voted down in April. But the MPs that spoke out against the bill in parliament haven’t escaped unscathed.
Three members of opposition party Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) are expected to be suspended for performing the Haka, in what has been described as the harshest punishment ever proposed on MPs in the country. A parliamentary committee recommended the suspensions, arguing that the Haka could have “intimidated” fellow MPs, while a Te Pāti Māori spokesperson described the punishment as a “warning shot to all of us to fall in line”. Maipi-Clarke is due to be suspended for a week, while the party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will be banned for 21 days.
The party’s over: Political parties in Mali dissolved in latest crackdown on democracy
Since a military junta took control of Mali in 2021 via a coup led by Colonel Assimi Goita, democracy has all but disappeared in the Sahel nation. Goita promised to hold elections in the year following his ascendancy to head of state, but has backed out of this commitment, instead holding onto power and recently gained backing to be declared president until at least 2030 – a move denounced by opposition parties.
But now, these parties won’t be able to denounce any further decisions made by the junta, as Goita has announced that all political parties were dissolved as of 13 May. Members of these parties have been banned from organising or holding any meetings.
This move is the latest escalation from a nation becoming increasingly repressive. Opposition leader Mamadou Traoré was arrested and imprisoned in April, and two further opposition leaders went missing last week and are feared forcibly disappeared. Protests took place in the capital Bamako last week, marking the first major pro-democracy demonstration since the military originally took control of Mali in 2020. These protests have not been tolerated, with the junta attempting to ban future demonstrations “for reasons of public order”.
A crackdown on journalists: Azerbaijan detains two independent journalists
Ilham Aliyev has been president of Azerbaijan since 2003, and his tenure has been marred by repeated attacks on the media. The nation ranks 167 out of 180 nations in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and in recent years has ramped up its efforts to smother independent reporting and detain journalists on trumped up charges. In the latest continuation of these efforts, two of the country’s few remaining independent journalists – Ulviyya Ali and Ahmad Mammadli – were detained on 6 and 7 May.
Ali was seemingly expecting her imminent detention. Having seen many of her contemporaries detained for their work, she preemptively wrote a letter to be published online in the case of her arrest. According to reporting by Le Monde, upon her arrest, Ali was allegedly beaten and threatened with rape by a police officer. Some have posited that Ali, who frequently worked for Voice of America, became more vulnerable following the forced closure of the US-funded media outlet’s operations by the Donald Trump administration.
Mammadli, who documented labour rights violations and political repression online, was arrested over an alleged stabbing – a charge his colleagues claim is politically motivated – and according to his wife, was beaten and tortured with electroshocks by police after refusing to unlock his phone. These two arrests bring the total number of journalists jailed in Azerbaijan to 25 since late 2023.
Social media shutdown: The Taliban targets content creators
The Taliban is implementing a large-scale crackdown on social media influencers in the country, particularly on platforms such as TikTok.
Two teenage influencers have been detained by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice for taking part in TikTok live broadcasts with women content creators from abroad, a practice denounced by the Taliban for being “un-Islamic”. Ministry spokesperson Saif Khyber has issued a warning that the ministry is surveilling public profiles for activity it deems to be immoral, and released two videos in which the TikTokers expressed regret and remorse for their content. Some have speculated that these videos may have been recorded under duress.
One of the TikTokers, Haroon Pakora, had been vocal about living in poverty before he gained fame on TikTok through street interviews in Kabul, but it is unlikely that he will continue posting on the platform.
A documentary withheld: BBC under fire for delaying release of Gaza documentary
Over 600 film industry professionals and members, including notable figures such as Miriam Margolyes, Susan Sarandon and Frankie Boyle, have accused the BBC of censoring Palestinian voices and have signed an open letter urging the organisation to release a Gaza documentary that has been withheld from broadcast.
Gaza: Medics Under Fire includes accounts from frontline health workers in Gaza and documents attacks on hospitals and medical clinics. According to the signatories, it has been ready to air for months, having undergone extensive fact checks and reviews. The BBC has claimed that the delay to Medics Under Fire has been extended due to its investigation into another documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which began after the narrator was revealed to be the son of a Hamas agriculture minister. The documentary was initially broadcast, then swiftly withdrawn.
The hold-up of the Medics Under Fire documentary, which was originally due to be broadcast in January, has drawn ire towards the BBC, with the open letter stating that “this is not editorial caution. It’s political suppression”, and suggesting the delay is “rooted in racism”. Some of the signatories were BBC employees, and a BBC spokesperson has stated that the film will be released “as soon as possible”. As of yet, there is no timeline for broadcast.
7 Apr 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features
The world of Afghan TV presenter Golali Karimi fell apart in August 2021 when the Taliban stormed her studio.
“They took our security guards, broke into our building and rushed on set. I knew then, the Taliban had taken Kabul.”
Karimi, who worked for a number of Afghan channels including Shamshad TV and Lemar TV, would later be asked to interview Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, in what would be one of his first public interviews on television. She showed me a video of the interview on her phone. “You can just see it on my face, I was absolutely terrified,” she said.
After that interview, Karimi received too many death threats to bear and left Afghanistan as a political refugee, finally settling in France: “When I first arrived, I didn’t even know what bonjour meant.”
To make ends meet, Karimi found a job as a waitress, later working in a supermarket. It took her two years to find her job at Begum TV in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.
In almost fluent French, Karimi told me: “I liked those jobs, I learnt a lot, but I am so happy to be a journalist again.”
Launched on International Women’s Day in March 2024, Begum TV broadcasts entertainment and educational programmes for Afghan women from Paris. It reaches thousands of women and girls in Afghanistan, who tune in to follow programmes ranging from poetry to sexual and reproductive health to music and culture. The programming is in both Dari and Pashto languages.
Begum TV has also digitalised the entire Afghan school curriculum, so that girls can continue to educate themselves despite being almost entirely banned from public spaces.
“They phone in and ask questions about their classes all the time,” Karimi told me. She now hosts a variety of shows at the channel, mostly programmes discussing poetry and culture.
I met Karimi during a visit to the Paris Begum TV studios. Ushered into the green room, I was offered tea and biscuits several times – that’s Afghan hospitality for you – and saw presenters applying their makeup impeccably, whilst occasionally bursting into fits of giggles. At moments like these, Paris could not have felt further from Kabul.
And despite being more than 7,000 kilometres away from Kabul in actual distance, Karimi (who is shown smiling behind the Begum TV scenes in the photograph below) still wears a mask on the streets of Paris for fear of being recognised. “People are still angry with me and what I post online, but I want to show women what is possible,” she said. She showed me her Instagram account with 60,000 followers where she posts about her life in Paris and her advocacy work. “You can see in the comments, some think it is great but there are also a lot of angry people.”
Photo by Emily Boyle
Karimi’s fellow presenter Saira Akakhil hosts Begum TV’s health programme. Akakhil left Afghanistan for obvious reasons: “I am a journalist and I am a woman,” she said.
Despite being out of the country, the fact that she works in the media remains dangerous for her family in Afghanistan. “Every time the phone rings, I fear the worst. I am absolutely terrified to pick up.”
The crackdown on Afghanistan’s media happened soon after the Taliban came to power. According to the United Nations, there were 336 recorded cases of arrest, detention, torture and intimidation of journalists and media workers between August 2021 and September 2024.
Broadcast journalism has been particularly vulnerable to threats and intimidation, as journalists are more recognisable and easier to track down. Women in particular have been banned from radio and television broadcasting in several provinces.
It is not surprising that Akakhil fears the worst for her family. On 4 February, Radio Begum, the sister channel to Begum TV which is based in Kabul, was raided by the Taliban and temporarily shut down. Radio Begum is one of the last remaining female-run media outlets in Afghanistan.
The Taliban accused the station of violating public broadcasting rules, although Radio Begum insists it was only providing educational content and attempting to provide women with a source of information after girls were banned from secondary school education by Afghanistan’s new rulers in 2021. Although the station was later allowed to resume broadcasting, the attack illustrated once more the Taliban’s violent crackdown on women.
It is clear that Begum TV is perceived as a threat to the Taliban. Far from the group’s media censors, the channel can independently reach more than 20 million women who have been stripped of their rights. The incident in Kabul was also a message to Begum’s offices in Paris.
Akakhil describes an upcoming interview in which she planned to talk to a doctor based in Kabul about periods and virginity, a very taboo topic for Afghans. The livestream was open for questions, and she was expecting quite a few callers from Afghanistan.
“Yesterday, I was going to talk to the doctor about anaemia. I think he must have looked us up and seen the news about Radio Begum. He got scared and cancelled last minute,” she said. Despite the distance, the Taliban raid in February seems to have had at least some of its desired effect.
During my visit to Begum’s buzzing Paris offices, I was struck by the resilience of the women there, who maintain hope despite the violent gender apartheid that is tearing their country apart, and appears to be worsening as time passes.
In December 2024, the Taliban banned the construction of windows in residential buildings that overlook areas where women are likely to be, and urged for walls to be built around houses to shield neighbours from the view of women using areas such as courtyards, to prevent “obscene acts”, according to the decree passed.
Women are no longer allowed to sing or recite poetry in public, and are strongly encouraged to veil both their bodies and voices outside their homes. Girls can no longer receive education beyond primary school. Women have been banned from attending medical training. Most public spaces are closed to women. It is devastating and heartbreaking.
But Akakhil is steadfast. She has no choice. “I am in love with this job. My people need this programme. I am the voice of Afghan women. I can’t stop. I won’t stop.”
6 Feb 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
When the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, they soon began searching people’s homes for items they deemed to be immoral. Waheedullah Saghar, the head of the music department at Kabul University, had to destroy all of his musical instruments before they were found. Among his collection were special items he’d bought during his time in India, such as a tanpura – a traditional folk stringed instrument.
“It was too risky to keep instruments at home,” he told Index. “Many of my colleagues also felt forced to destroy their instruments, and we disposed of the broken pieces in the garbage to protect ourselves.”
He was denied access to his university and received an official notice from the Taliban that all musical activities in Afghanistan would be prohibited in future.
“It’s very strange, because one day we were honourable, respectable people of our city,” he said. “Then just one day later we became victims and as if we should be punished, because we were musicians. It was very painful and very difficult.”
Saghar and his colleagues were granted asylum in Germany in 2021, and he is currently based in New York on a year-long placement, where he is keeping the culture of his home country alive by teaching university students about Afghan and Indian classical music.
“We had to find a solution for our situation,” he said. “Staying in Afghanistan in that critical moment was not an option because our lives were in danger.”
His story is similar to those of many musicians who have been either forced to leave or forced to abandon their livelihoods. Musicians in the country live in fear of discrimination, humiliation, torture, imprisonment, sexual violence in the case of women and even death. According to the Associated Press, the family of folk singer Fawad Andarabi accused the Taliban of executing him near his home in a mountain province north of Kabul in 2021.
Since their return in 2021, the Taliban have waged a war on music, claiming that it causes “moral corruption”. This approach mirrors their reign between 1996 and 2001, when music was also strictly prohibited. According to figures from its own Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the group has destroyed more than 21,000 musical instruments over the past year, including traditional items such as tabla drums and rubabs, a type of lute which is Afghanistan’s national instrument.
After their takeover of Kabul, the country’s public radio station, Radio Afghanistan, was swiftly rebranded Voice of Sharia, and music was removed from radio and TV stations, replaced with religious chanting.
Afghans play the dambora at a music festival in Bamyan province in 2017. Photo by Xinhua / Alamy
The Taliban’s use of chanting shows that there is hypocrisy in their extremism, Saghar says. They are sung without instruments, to inspire patriotism and instil their ideology.
“The Taliban don’t seem to understand what music truly represents or its role in society,” he said. “They claim that music is haram (“forbidden”) in Islam, without considering its broader meaning and significance. Music is an inseparable part of human life and is even integrated into aspects of Islamic practice.
“For example, the Quran is recited using musical scales, known as maqams in Arabic, and the Taliban themselves sing taranas – songs composed in Afghan musical scales. However, they overlook these nuances, and they are mainly opposed to musical instruments.”
Since the Taliban’s return, the move towards cultural censorship has gradually worsened, said Ahmad Sarmast, who is the founder of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, an exiled music school now based in Portugal.
Three years after their takeover, the Taliban announced their “vice and virtue laws”, which have been internationally condemned by human rights groups and the UN. These put in writing the banning of music, said Sarmast, as well as the restriction of women singing or reading aloud in public. This is in addition to the chilling stipulation that women must not speak or show their faces outside their homes.
Cultural bans have since been extended to the wider creative industries, such as filming and photography. The new morality laws prescribe that news media cannot publish images of living things, and TV stations across the country are gradually being closed and converted to radio stations as a result, according to a report from the London-based news site Afghanistan International.
“It’s not just the ban of music or the destruction of musical instruments – it’s a direct attack on the cultural heritage of Afghanistan, and on the freedom of expression of the Afghan people,” said Sarmast.
His orchestral school, which teaches classical Afghan as well as classical and modern Western music, has been “on the Taliban’s hit list” for a decade, he told Index, and endured suicide bombing attempts and targeted attacks even before the group came back into power. Despite the international “whitewashing” of Taliban 2.0, he knew the organisation was “not capable of being changed”.
“We knew that when the Taliban came, our days would be over,” he said.
In a similar way to Saghar’s university department, his music school was “treated like a military barracks” when the Taliban returned. The campus was vandalised, students and faculty were denied entry, property was removed and its bank account was seized.
“Afghanistan was suddenly turned into a silenced nation,” said Sarmast.
Musicians who have been granted asylum tend to be those with a public profile and strong international connections, or those from wealthier backgrounds. Others sold everything they could and took up low-paid jobs, such as selling street food, to survive, Sarmast explained.
One female violinist spoke to Index anonymously about her experiences. She was previously a music teacher but now cannot get a job because she doesn’t have legitimate qualifications beyond her musical education, which is now worthless.
She is currently in hiding and has had to move house several times to avoid being found out as a former musician. She has applied for asylum in Europe, but hasn’t yet been accepted.
“We don’t have a peaceful life. We have to be hidden,” she said. “No one should know that we used to make music. If the Taliban find out, they will kill us.”
Life is particularly treacherous for female musicians. This didn’t start when the Taliban came back into power, but it has worsened, says London-based Afghan singer Elaha Soroor. She told Index that gender discrimination from the fallout from the Taliban’s previous reign made her situation untenable.
“There was a patriarchy, this system, this way of looking at women’s lives – it’s always been there,” she said. “But the Taliban is the worst form of patriarchy. The foundation was there, but people were changing slowly [after their earlier fall], and things were becoming more normal.”
Singer-songwriter Elaha Soroor left Afghanistan in 2010, and now lives in the UK. Photo by Elaha Soroor. Photo by Elaha Soroor
Soroor, who is of the persecuted Hazara ethnic group, was one of the first female musicians to perform in public after the fall of the Taliban in 2000, and appeared on the reality TV show Afghan Star in 2008. She faced death threats, harassment and violence because of her public profile, including from male family members. When an anonymous person uploaded a fake pornographic video of her to YouTube, the violence escalated, and she fled Afghanistan in 2010, seeking asylum in the UK in 2012.
Whilst society was still restrictive, there was more freedom for musical expression then, she said. Bands played at weddings, “music travellers” would walk around the streets with percussion instruments and people loved listening to music.
“You’d go to a taxi [and] everybody’s listening to music at a loud volume,” she said. “It was mainly Afghan pop music from the ’60s and ’70s, new music, Bollywood, Turkish, Arabic and Hindustani.”
She believes that the Taliban’s draconian laws are a way of limiting free thought.
“Musicians, artists, they open up new doors and new ideas. They have this power of entering someone’s subconscious. The Taliban are scared of the power of art, because it can spark new ideas in someone’s mind, and change their way of thinking,” she said.
Now that she’s out of the country, she believes it is her role as an exiled musician to help keep Afghan music alive. In October, she released a new female liberation song titled Naan, Kar, Azadi! (Bread, Work, Freedom!), which she sings in her mother language, Farsi. It features other exiled female Afghans who have spoken out against the Taliban’s oppressive rule, including rapper Sonita Alizadeh. On Instagram, Soroor dedicated the song to “our sisters in Afghanistan as they continue to fight for their rights… in the face of adversity”.
“I feel like the artists who are outside Afghanistan… should be more proactive, create more and stay connected with the story of Afghanistan,” Soroor said. “So at least, if people cannot produce art inside, we should continue producing it outside and export it there [through the internet]. So we keep the flame alive.”
Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, who produced Soroor’s latest track, is director of performance at Oxford University’s St Catherine’s College, and an academic specialising in orchestral music in Afghanistan. She is working with exiled Afghan musicians to write the first book on orchestral music in the country.
She says that while there is an “absolute ban on music”, its enforcement is likely “uneven”. It’s possible that, in less policed areas, people still listen to music and “engage in their traditional music practices” at home, but professional music-making has certainly been brought to a standstill, which will have long-term impacts on the country’s musical heritage.
“You can’t work – there are no weddings, no parties,” she told Index. “So you have people’s musical knowledge and skill-sets that are probably atrophying. Then they’re becoming impoverished because they don’t have alternative work opportunities.” This has lowered the “social status” of musicians, she said, to historically what it would have been when it was intertwined with “vices” such as alcohol and drug use.
She is particularly concerned about traditional musicians, who she says have been overlooked by European asylum schemes. These have typically given preference to schools making orchestral music – or “Western” music – as they have stronger diplomatic ties with international orchestras, and their students are often better educated with stronger English language skills.
Music made using instruments such as the rubab, the tanbur and the dholak could be lost. She is calling for Germany, which has already established asylum schemes, to set up an Institute of Afghanistan Traditional Music, which could become an international hub for the art form and could help to “potentially get more people out of the country to teach”.
The Afghanistan National Institute of Music is now based in Portugal. Photo by Jennifer Taylor
Artists who made “modern” music, such as rock and pop, also remain stranded in the country. One singer-songwriter and guitar player spoke to Index anonymously. He taught himself the guitar after practising on his father’s dotar. His income stream from music has completely stopped. While he sees music “as a way for great social and cultural change, rather than for money making”, that too has been curtailed.
Having a public profile as a musician is now “almost equal to signing my death certificate”, he said. He has endured threats and physical attacks, and the situation has severely impacted his mental health. “I spend every day with worry and every night with fear, and sometimes I jump from sleep,” he said. “The mental problems that have been created for me are sometimes unbearable. I am always worried about being arrested, killed or tortured.”
Prior to 2021, he would perform for events like International Women’s Day. He hopes that one day girls and women can “study freely and play music, and not be deprived of their basic rights”.
“The absence of music and art has caused freedom of expression to disappear, creativity in culture and art to decline, and national and cultural identity to be weakened,” he said.
Those who have fled Afghanistan have been torn away from their home country, but are still beating the drum for progress and equality. Sarmast, of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, says that the international music community must work together to raise awareness of the cultural destruction and “gender apartheid” that is happening, and put pressure on the Taliban to restore human rights, of which he believes access to music is one.
As Afghan musicians live in the shadows, those in exile continue to raise awareness of their plight. But there is a real risk that the rich musical heritage of the country will be forever silenced if the world doesn’t continue to campaign for its right to exist.
