Dreams Deferred: The Oppression of Women Judges Under Taliban Rule

A review of Escape From Kabul: The Afghan Women Judges Who Fled the Taliban and Those They Left Behind by Karen Bartlett.

On a cold Sunday morning in January 2021, Qadria Yasini, a judge on the Supreme Court of Afghanistan in Kabul, set out for work with her colleague, Zakia Herawi. As they rode in the back seat of a government-provided car, they were gunned down in broad daylight by three assassins, who then fled on foot and by motorcycle. When Yasini’s possessions were returned to her family, a Mother’s Day greeting from her two teenage sons was found in her handbag, riddled by bullets.

Afghanistan had appointed its first woman judge in 1969 under the reign of the country’s last king. Progressive governments in the 1970s and ’80s further expanded opportunities for women’s education and advanced women’s rights. During this period of social reforms, Yasini studied law and eventually became a judge.

That period ended abruptly when the Taliban first seized power in 1996. Yasini fled to Pakistan, married a doctor and had children. The family returned home after the allied invasion in 2001, and the following 20-year presence of NATO, U.S. forces and civilian contractors helped to again fulfill the aspirations of educated Afghan women.

The allied presence also unleashed a fierce backlash. Female judges like Yasini and Herawi represented everything the Taliban most despised and feared, and they became a special target for fundamentalists who saw them as stooges of Western governments.

This heartbreaking story opens British journalist Karen Bartlett’s deeply reported, troubling book. But Bartlett’s narrative also provides an inspiring tale of resilience. News of the judges’ brazen killings traveled quickly from the country’s tight-knit sorority of some 270 women jurists to a global community called the International Association of Women Judges.

The IAWJ network sprang into action as threats against Afghan women increased in the wake of the Doha Agreement that President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban in 2020, promising U.S. and NATO withdrawal within a year.

President Joe Biden’s decision to uphold that pact set into motion the chaos that engulfed Kabul when the Taliban arrived and the Afghan government fled in August 2021. U.S. and NATO withdrawal betrayed a generation of women who had come of age under the occupation and whose service in government agencies, courts, media and educational institutions put them at extreme risk. Yet few provisions were made by the Americans or other military or government aid groups to evacuate these women safely on flights out of Afghanistan.

Remarkably, IAWJ members as far-flung as Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Kenya and elsewhere stepped up to help fill the void, working tirelessly during and after the U.S. withdrawal to locate and help evacuate as many women as possible, along with their extended families. Using WhatsApp and other messaging services, they managed to stay in touch with Afghan women in hiding and provide them safe cover to the airport, then onto flights headed to nearby, so-called lily pad countries that provided temporary refuge until permanent resettlements could be arranged.

The work continues, with some 40 women judges still trapped in Afghanistan as of September 2024, even as the world’s attention is now divided among Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and other regions of war and conflict.

Meanwhile, the second Trump administration has terminated the Temporary Protected Status visa program extended to Afghan refugees who managed to reach the U.S.—effective July 14.

Bartlett weaves together the often-harrowing stories of a handful of the strong, educated, empowered Afghan women who were forced to escape their homeland and are remaking their lives abroad. They face enormous obstacles as they adjust to new cultures, learn new languages and work to support their families, often in menial jobs, which can still be hard for Afghan women to come by. They carry on as immigrant women have done for generations before them, in order to provide a more hopeful future for their children—and too often, with their own dreams deferred.

The U.S. government, along with civilian volunteers, did manage to evacuate more than 120,000 Afghans in August 2021, an admirable achievement given the abruptness of the pullout. Escape From Kabul, however, is a cautionary tale of the toll that displacement and denial continue to take on progress in countries like Afghanistan. Bartlett’s message is that we must continue to support these noble and courageous women, never again averting our gaze.

This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox—or order a single copy of the Summer issue as a standalone for just $5.