Afghan Women Activist Stories Part I: Claiming the Narrative – Voices from Exile

Abstract

The co-editor of this special issue, Susanne Schmeidl, here joins two Afghan women in exile: Suraya Pakzad, founder of the Voice of Women Organization and internationally recognised advocate for women’s rights, and Zainab Qadiri, a playwright, theatre director and writer committed to preserving Hazara cultural memory and women’s artistic expression. This Current Debate section presents two autoethnographic narratives documenting lives shaped by activism, cultural production and resistance under shifting Afghan political regimes. Suraya Pakzad recounts her trajectory from clandestine home-schooling for girls under the Taliban in the 1990s to leading one of Afghanistan’s largest women-led NGOs. Zainab Qadiri reflects on her path through theatre and literature as tools of advocacy, memory and identity. Both narratives foreground embodied knowledge, feminist praxis and the preservation of voice in the face of exile and systemic silencing, offering powerful insights into Afghan women’s agency and their contributions to knowledge production.