Afghan women and girls are being erased from public life

The fall of Kabul and everything she carries five years later.Two days after Salma's engagement party in Kabul, the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan."I woke up and I imagined so many things, but not that the Taliban would be outside," she said.Salma was 22 at the time and halfway through completing her master's degree.Now, 27 and living in Australia, she's watching her home country fade from global attention as it mark five years under Taliban rule.Salma's family knew the Taliban had seized control over other parts of the country, so they kept the TV on constantly.But when she walked into the lounge room on Sunday, August 15, 2021, the TV was fuzzy It had been cut."We thought maybe another war would happen but no one was expecting the government to leave," she said."I could see the expressions of fear and sadness on the faces of my family."The embassies were shut, international organisations had left, and prisoners had been released and were all over the city."I kept thinking, 'what's going to happen to us?'"The image that had been given to us was that if they [the Taliban] see you as Kabul-based, they will shoot you."Salma ran a website that shared stories of Afghan women from around the country.One of Salma's brothers was an Australian citizen who worked in academia