Afghan women panel

A graphic for the WVU Libraries' panel, "Justice for Afghan Women and Girls Now: Understanding and Action.”

There’s a bang at the door as the Taliban force their way into a young woman’s dental clinic that she started when she saw her people getting infections or even dying from poor dental hygiene. The officers are carrying a metal rod.

“Why are you treating a man?” they yell at her. Then they beat her and the man, and they destroy her equipment and her clinic. She never knew what happened to the man, but she knew they would kill her if they ever caught her again.

Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to treat men, but she did not think they would visit her clinic. She left Afghanistan a few days later. 

This is just one of the several stories of Afghan women seeking asylum that Alison Peck, WVU Immigration Law Clinic leader and international law expert, has heard working with evacuees.

She shared this story at the WVU Libraries panel, “Justice for Afghan Women and Girls Now: Understanding and Action,” on Jan. 25. The virtual panel was hosted by the Eberly College, WVU Women's Resource Center, WVU Immigration Law Clinic and WV Now.

Peck helps those trying to leave and those who have already left Afghanistan that are living on military bases and trying to access the U.S. by seeking asylum, special immigrant visas and other family visas. 

“We are talking about tens of thousands of people who are going to need legal representation in order to make these applications, so the need for the bar is overwhelming,” she said. 

Renee Corbett, an outreach worker for the Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services with Catholic Charities WV, said there is more West Virginia could be doing to help Afghan families find refuge. Corbett said her organization helps with refugee resettlement and finding safe and affordable housing, food and other resources. 

Corbett said these refugees typically have only 90 days to gather documents like SSI, find schools and jobs and show that they can live independently in the U.S. 

“That’s really hard, you know, to be able to go to a new country, and you have a small amount of support from the U.S. government and a small amount of support from your state government,” said Corbett. 

Corbett said her organization helps refugees in West Virginia to do this, but the state has only accepted five of the 21,000 evacuees still seeking resettlement. These five are WVU students who are currently trying to help their families live in the U.S. as well. 

She said West Virginians can help by volunteering at organizations like hers to help refugees become acquainted with life in the U.S. They can also visit the Sponsor Circle Program to help sponsor resettlement for Afghan evacuees and urge their senators to vote to change refugee quotas for the U.S. 

Eleanor Smeal, president and cofounder of the Feminist Majority Foundation, has contributed to the foundation’s 20 years of increasing Afghan women’s rights that were taken away by the Taliban. She said that, before the Taliban arrived, women were in highly respected professions, and Afghanistan was approaching a constitutional democracy. 

“Every human right had been taken away,” Smeal said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Manal AlNatour, director of the Arabic studies program, said that women and children are the most vulnerable people affected by the war. She added that the situation has worsened after the regain of Taliban control in August of 2021. 

“What is being done right now in Afghanistan is a clear violation of human rights, but there are still many people, mostly women, who are trying to fight against them, even if their lives are in danger,” she said. 

Appalachian lawyer, Parween Mascari, said she wakes up to messages from her family in Afghanistan that she has received in the middle of the night telling her that they are afraid for their lives and asking for her help. She said she wants her family, like many other families, to be able to find resettlement in the U.S. 

Mascari said the women in her family were worried about not being able to continue their studies or professions when the Taliban took over. She reports that her niece has been able to continue her studies and work in the global affairs office at WVU, although finding visas for her other family members who do not work for the U.S. government has been more difficult.

“[The Taliban] don’t like people who believe in freedom,” she said. “I learned that people in my family had been poisoned and beaten and bombed…and killed in all kinds of terrible ways and tortured and those folks are now back in power in the country, the people that did that to them.”