Jamila Afghani was settling into her new home in Kitchener, Ontario, when she found out that the Taliban had raided her office back in Afghanistan. Uniformed officers had barged into a counselling service for women in Kabul, accused the staff of running “a ministry of women” and taken one of the employees away for questioning.
Afghani had chosen the premises in the capital in part because of its proximity to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, where she had good contacts who supported her work championing the rights of women and girls. When the Taliban replaced the women’s ministry with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Afghani’s organisation found itself working under the nose of the morality police.
