I was born during the civil war in Afghanistan. Four years later the Taliban took over Mazar-e-Sharif, where my family lived. They started by randomly killing and imprisoning people, especially targeting Hazara people. My family was terrified.

We hid in our basement and many of our neighbors and relatives joined us. With limited food supplies in our basement, we prayed for the chaos, screaming and killing to stop. After establishing their control, the Taliban came to search our house.

We had to quickly hide our photo albums, my parents’ wedding and graduation video cassettes. These things, including music and TV were not allowed. We buried them in our yard. At night we would hear screams of tortured people coming from the prison across the street.

In addition to beating women, the Taliban forcibly married young and little girls, hurting their families if they opposed the marriage. Many of these young women came to seek my mother’s advice on how to leave the country under the pretense of seeking gynecologist’s medical help.

We had no other choice but to leave our city and everything behind when one Talib came to my mother asking to marry me. I was FIVE years old! Knowing what they do to families who refuse, my mother didn’t reject it, but said she will speak to my father abt it. We fled that night.

That was life under the Taliban. I was reading @euamiri article yesterday where one of the Taliban members said, “When the U.S. leaves, we will implement Taliban law, by dialogue or by force.” Knowing and experiencing the “Taliban law,” this truly terrifies me. #Afghanistan