The Choking Ring around the Throat of Art: Afghan Women Actresses under Taliban Repression

Photo: AP/variety

In the silent streets of Kabul, where women’s performances once echoed before the camera, a heavy silence now fills the air.

Afghan women actresses, who had managed to enter the world of art despite years of social and cultural pressure, have once again been pushed to the margins.

Through their anti-women restrictions, the Taliban appear to have turned time backwards.

Kobra Hashemi is one of these women actresses; a woman who supported her family by acting in films and television series, but now gazes helplessly at the four walls of her home.

Kobra told Zan News:

“The Taliban not only prevent me from artistic activity, but have also forced me to remain at home. Art was my only means of livelihood, and now it has been taken away from me.”

But Kobra is not alone. Shazia Farahmand, another actress, recalls the days when she had already been threatened by the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

“They told me that my face should no longer appear in films. Now, even my participation in television programmes is forbidden. They want to silence our voices, as if we do not exist at all.”

Meanwhile, Khadija Naimi, a woman who is both a mother and the sole breadwinner of her family, recounts her difficult living conditions to Zan News in a trembling voice.

“I have no husband, no one to bring food home. Through art, I was able to feed my four daughters. But now… we go to bed hungry at night.”

These accounts are only a few among hundreds of women whose voices have been lost within the high walls of politics and extremism; women for whom art was not only a passion but a means of survival.

Today, the curtain has fallen, and the lights of the cameras have gone dark, not by choice but by force.

Afghan women actresses once again stand amid darkness, holding on to the hope that still lives in their hearts.