Female students show grit and endurance in 11th-hour escape from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

Students from the Asian University for Women endured abuse, being refused airport entry and a long-haul journey to flee Afghanistan

Despite assurances by the country’s new rulers it would respect rights, the women were fuelled by reports of women and activists being persecuted

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Afghan student Humaira Zafari is pictured inside a US military plane out of Kabul, along with other Afghan civilians. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:00pm, 18 Sep 2021

After two suicide bomb attacks outside Kabul airport on 26 August, nearly 20 of a convoy of female Afghan university students fleeing for their freedom abandoned their plans for an urgent evacuation.

But the rest were adamant they would try a third time to enter the airport because staying was simply not an option for these young women.

“We would either die trying or make it out of Afghanistan alive,” said 22-year-old Sabira Madady in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

“It was a war and we are war victims. We counted every minute of when death would hit us on the bus, fearing either ISIS would bomb us apart or the Taliban would shoot us dead,” Madady said.

At Kabul airport, the students are ready to board the flight out of Afghanistan. Photo: Handout

Gunshots, ambulance sirens and the howling of people without hope were ringing in their ears after days of being stranded in buses outside the dismantled Kabul Airport that no longer resembled the place it was before Kabul’s fall.

Carefully masked in long hijabs and black scarves, they kept their heads down to remain invisible and conformed to the Taliban’s expectations of what a woman should look like.