t was the middle of the night when Zarin Gul realised that her daughter Nasrin had to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Her daughter’s husband was away working in Iran and the two women were alone with Nasrin’s seven children when Nasrin, heavily pregnant with her eighth child, began experiencing severe pains.
Gul helped Nasrin into a rickshaw and they set off into the night. Holding her daughter’s hand as the rickshaw jolted over the dirt road, Gul says she prayed they would not encounter a Taliban checkpoint.
“I kept thinking, if only Nasrin’s husband were here. If only I could ease my daughter’s pain,” she says. Her prayers were not answered. The rickshaw’s small lamp was spotted by Taliban fighters who signalled for them to stop and demanded to know where they were going.
As a frightened Gul explained that her daughter was sick and needed urgent medical attention, they asked why the women were travelling without a male escort, or mahram. Even though Gul explained that Nasrin’s husband was working abroad, the fighters refused to allow them to pass and continue their journey to the hospital.
“I begged them, telling them my daughter was dying. I pleaded for their permission,” says Gul. “But they still refused. In desperation, I lied and said the rickshaw driver was my nephew and our guardian. Only then did they let us pass.”
By the time they reached the hospital it was too late. Nasrin’s baby had already died in her womb, and her uterus had ruptured. The doctors said Nasrin needed to be transferred to another hospital and so Gul helped her daughter into another rickshaw and they set off again, towards a government hospital an hour away. On their way they were stopped at two more Taliban checkpoints, each time detained for long periods because they were travelling alone.
They did finally reach the hospital, but Nasrin had not survived the journey. “The doctors told us that due to excessive bleeding and the ruptured uterus, both the baby and the mother had died,” says Gul. “We buried them side by side.”
The Guardian and Zan Times, an Afghan news agency, has interviewed dozens of women and healthcare professionals across multiple Afghan provinces. Their testimonies build a picture of a maternal and child healthcare system dangerously compromised and eroded by the Taliban’s draconian policies towards women.
Read full investigation on the Guardian
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