Batool Haidari was a prominent professor of sexology at a university in Kabul before last year’s Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Batool Haidari, 37, talks during an interview with the Associated Press on a train taking her from her home on the outskirts of Rome, to the capital's center, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Batool Haidari was a prominent professor of sexology at a university in Kabul before last years Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She used to lecture mixed classes of male and female students and look after her patients struggling with their gender identity. That comfortable life came to an abrupt halt on Aug.
Haidari, 37, was among the many women who fled the Taliban, fearing a return to the practices of their previous rule in the late 1990s, including largely barring girls and women from education and work. She reached Rome at the end of 2021, after a daring escape through Pakistan aided by Italian volunteers who arranged for her and her family to be hosted in the Italian capital's suburbs.
“When my son passed the exam to access the faculty of Medicine at a university in Rome, for me it was good news,” she said, during a commute to her Italian classes in central Rome. “Because if I came to a European country, it was mainly for the future of my children.” But the risks soon became too high. Haidari was not only an educated female activist, but also a member of the Hazara ethnic group.
“We heard that Taliban were shooting and searching houses very close to their hiding place,” Mazzola said. “We were frantically in touch with the Italian embassy in Pakistan, with confidential contacts in Afghanistan, and we decided together that they had to change their hiding place every three days.”
Now that the refugees are in Italy and gradually getting asylum, Mazzola said, the priority is to secure for them official recognition of their university degrees or other qualifications that will help them find dignified employment.
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