KABUL – A mother of three from a remote area of northwestern Afghanistanremembers the day the head of a local Islamic State group came to hervillage, demanding money he said her husband had promised.
“I told him we didn’t have any money but that if we found any we would sendit to him. But he didn’t accept that and said I had to be married to one ofhis people and leave my husband and go with them,” Zarifa said.
“When I refused, the people he had with him took my children to anotherroom and he took a gun and said if I didn’t go with him he would kill meand take my house. And he did everything he could to me.”
Even by the bloody standards of the Afghan war, Islamic State has gained anunmatched reputation for brutality, routinely beheading opponents orforcing them to sit on explosives.
But while forced marriages and rape have been among the most notablefeatures of Islamic State rule in Iraq and Syria they have been much lesswidely reported in Afghanistan.
While there have been reports in Nangarhar, the eastern province whereIslamic State first appeared in 2014 and in Zabul in the south, deep taboosthat can make it impossible for women to report sexual abuse make it hardto know its scale.
The group has a growing presence in Zarifa’s province of Jawzjan, on theborder with Turkmenistan, exploiting smuggling routes and attracting bothforeign fighters as well as unemployed locals and fighting both US-backedAfghan forces and the Taliban.
For Zarifa, the attack forced her to leave her home in the Darzab districtof south Jawzjan and seek shelter in the provincial capital of Sheberghan.
“My husband was a farmer and now I can’t face my husband and my neighborsand so, despite the danger, I left,” she said.