The owner of the restaurant, Nilofar Ayoubi, who has been living in Poland for three years, didn’t bat an eyelid over the decision, because she “know[s] what it’s like to need help,” she said.
Nilofar, her husband and three children fled Afghanistan with just two backpacks when the Islamist militant Taliban seized power in August 2021. Nilofar was helped by a Polish journalist, Michał Żakowski, who had contacted her for an interview for his show on Radio 357 just a day before the fall of Kabul.
That same day, when he understood that she was on a death list and the Taliban was already looking for her, he contacted everyone he could to evacuate her and her family on the next plane to Poland.
Through the vapors of fluffy Afghan rice in the Warsaw restaurant emerges a woman who has endured much for her commitment to help people in need.
Nilofar, 28, is one of Afghanistan’s first and youngest female entrepreneurs to own several businesses, including two clothing companies, Maria Clothing and Maria Bride, which gave work to hundreds of women.
She is also a journalist and a prominent figure in the Afghan women’s rights movement, having founded the Women’s Political Participation Network, an advocacy organization for female engagement in politics. She often works with the EU and UN on Afghan women’s rights initiatives.
It is therefore unsurprising that a few days ago she attended a historic summit held in Albania and attended by around 140 people, discussing the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
The three-day conference was organized “by Afghan women, for Afghan women” Nilofar proudly said. It was the first time since the Taliban took over that a group of Afghan women from civil society managed to come together and formally voice their concerns to the world.
They released a statement on Monday focusing on two key demands: inclusion, and the recognition of ‘gender apartheid’ under international law.
Afghan women demand to be included
So far, three international UN-led peace talks on Afghanistan have taken place in Qatar’s capital, Doha, with this year’s taking place on June 30 and July 1. By request of the Taliban, the talks excluded Afghan women, which drew criticism from the Human Rights Watch campaign group, as well as the women’s summit.
The summit said that recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan in the first place was a mistake.
In their statement, the Afghan women shared their vision of establishing a government based on “the will of the people, ensuring equal participation of women and men at all levels and sectors of governance.”
Nilofar, who was part of the media committee at the summit, said: “There is absolutely no peace with a group who thinks that women are ‘marry objects’, who treat women as less than a human being.”
‘If you’re a woman, you’re a nobody’
Another core demand from the conference is to recognize ‘gender apartheid’ as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute – which Afghanistan is a signatory to.
“In Afghanistan, if you are a woman, you are a nobody. You don’t have the right to education, the right to work, the right to choose what you wear, the right to even step out of your home without the permission of a male in the family,” Nilofar said.
Two weeks prior to the women's summit, the Taliban enacted the “Law for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” which describes women’s voices as ‘awrah’ (something to be concealed) and prohibits women from speaking and singing in public.
According to UN experts and human rights organization Amnesty International, the term ‘gender apartheid’ is necessary to address Afghanistan’s current institutionalized system of discrimination and oppression against women.
Ultimately, it’s a question of accountability. The women’s summit wanted ‘gender apartheid’ to be included in international law so that the de-facto Taliban leaders, like Mawlawi Hibatullah, can be tried at the International Criminal Court.
“We are not here after the small fish,” Nilofar said. “We want to bring the main culprit to justice.”
Global solidarity
As soon as she came to Poland as a refugee, Nilofar knew she was going to get engaged in the Polish abortion rights movement, which was in full swing by the time she arrived.
The Women’s Strike, as it was called, protested a ruling by Poland’s highest court in October 2020 that implemented a near-total ban on abortions. The ban is still in place today.
“I come from Afghanistan, a country that has bigger struggles and issues, but I understand the value of these [abortion] rights,” she said.
Turning to international feminist activists’ response to the Taliban’s infringement of Afghan women’s rights, Nilofar had little positive to say. She added frankly that she was “so, so disappointed.”
She said she wasn’t aware of any meaningful international mobilizations for the women of Afghanistan – something that makes her furious.
“If you are silent today then you are no different to those who are silencing us back at home,” she said.
‘The world has ended for them’
Tuesday marked exactly three years since the Taliban banned education for women and girls above sixth grade in Afghanistan. That was a decision which has “destroyed a generation,” Nilofar said, including the generation of her own cousins back home.
The day the ban was implemented, Nilofar recalled, her cousins were “crying in the graduation clothes they had prepared, asking: ‘What do we do? What should we do? How are we going to survive like this?’”
She also received messages from her family saying that “they are suicidal, because they see that the world has ended for them.”
Nilofar is convinced that as long as international civil society doesn’t step up and pressure politicians to recognize ‘gender apartheid’, not much will change for Afghan women and girls.
That said, Nilofar believes the Albania summit showed that after three years, Afghan women “have come a long, long way... despite men trying to break [them.]”
As Polish society and the government scramble to provide vital support to the people whose homes have been swallowed up by the floods, Nilofar’s restaurant is preparing to ship food packages to the south. She will be traveling with a trunk of fresh Afghan stuffed bread, rice, crispy samusas, noodles and dumplings, making her way to the people who have lost everything.
