‘Waiting for Taliban to come … and kill me’

PBC News:  One of Afghanistan’s first female mayors has said that she is waiting for the Taliban to find her and kill her, reports The Independent.
Zarifa Ghafari, the 27-year-old former mayor of Maidan Shar in Wardak province, told the i newspaper: “I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family”.

“I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me.”

“I can’t leave my family,” she said. “And anyway, where would I go?”

Just three weeks ago, she told the i newspaper that she had hope for the future of her country.

“Younger people are aware of what’s happening,” she said. “They have social media. They communicate. I think they will continue fighting for progress and our rights. I think there is a future for this country.”

In 2018 Ms Ghafari was appointed mayor of Maidan Shar by president Ashraf Ghani, making her Afghanistan’s youngest mayor and the first woman to hold office in the conservative city.

The i reported that the Taliban has frequently vowed to kill Ms Ghafari, adding that her father was gunned down on 15 November 2020, just 20 days after a third attempt on her life had been made.

As the Taliban continued to gain ground across Afghanistan, Ms Ghafari was given a job at the Defence Ministry in Kabul, where she was responsible for the welfare of soldiers and civilians injured in terrorist attacks; this role offered a relative degree of safety, compared with the public profile of her role as mayor in the central Wardak province.