They cannot study from the age of 12, they cannot work, they cannot go to parks and squares, they cannot travel without a close male relative, they cannot visit beauty salons and they do not have access to contraceptives. Afghan women have been stripped of almost all of their rights step by step. But above all, the Taliban seek to deprive them of any education and knowledge. So, two weeks ago, the last women’s library in Kabul was forced to close.

This is the Zan library (meaning “woman” in Dari), which had to be closed due to threats and harassment from the Taliban. Now that the library is gone, he explains via whatsapp El Pais one of its founders, 28-year-old economist Laila Basim, “hope is over.” ‘Afghan women have nowhere else to talk and learn’, explains Basim from Kabul. The library was set up in the basement of a market in the Red Paul district of the Afghan capital, visited by “more than 400 women” and contained 5,000 volumes in four languages ​​(Persian, Pashto, English and Arabic). But it became much more than a place to read, it was a meeting space with free seminars and training on “women’s rights, politics, religion and other topics.” The goal was very specific: “to increase knowledge about women.”

DEA / G. COZZI

As he tells El Pais everything in the library, fromshelves, tables, chairs and the books themselves were the result of donations. Now the volumes are stacked in the homes of volunteers. “For 19 months,” explains Basim, “my colleagues and I fought against the policies of the Taliban. Our war is a war of pens against guns.” However, in the last period The Taliban tightened control and threatened women with death libraries. “They sealed the door twice, but we reopened it with the help of friends and continued to work,” says the founder. “The Taliban didn’t stop there. They came every day to ask us what was going on there and what the readers were doing in the library. One day, four security officials broke into my house and began to ask me who gave us permission to open. Then we were told that a woman’s place is in the house, not on the street.”