Sitting beside her children in a mud-brick house in Jalalabad, Surayya points to a photograph of her husband on the wall.
“If my husband were alive, why would I be struggling like this?” she says. “The war took my life partner from me. We have not known a good day since he was killed.”
Worn mattresses lie across the floor of the room. Surayya, a mother of four daughters and two sons, now works in other people’s homes to keep her family fed.
Her husband served in the former Afghan government’s police force and was killed fighting the Taliban, she says. After his death, her mother-in-law forced her out of the family home.
Surayya moved with her children from Behsud district in Nangarhar province to Jalalabad, where they have lived for the past two years. She says she has had to support the household since her husband’s death and has received none of the benefits she has sought in connection with his service.
“Financial hardship has affected my children’s education, too,” she says. “My sons are eight and 12, and both have had to leave school because of poverty. One now sells plastic bags in the city to help cover our expenses.”
Of her four daughters, two are 15-year-old twins, one is 17 and another is married. Surayya says her daughters studied through eighth grade and are now learning to sew at a tailoring centre.
Their prospects of returning to formal education are also constrained by the Taliban’s ban on girls attending school beyond sixth grade.
As Surayya recalls her husband’s death, her voice catches. She falls silent for a moment before continuing in a trembling voice.
“Thousands of women in Afghanistan have been widowed like me. Thousands of girls and boys, like my children, have lost their fathers in the fighting and have been left without someone to provide for them. We cannot even get the benefits we are entitled to. We do not know where to turn.”
She urges aid organisations to create jobs for women who can work, allowing them to support their families and, in her words, “stand on their own feet.”
In Kabul, Yasamin faces a similar struggle.
The 33-year-old, who is identified by a pseudonym, lives with her three daughters and one son in a rented house on the outskirts of the city. Her husband, she says, was an officer in the former government’s Afghan National Army and was killed fighting the Taliban in Kandahar.
His death left her responsible for supporting the household and raising their four children. She says financial hardship has forced all of them out of school.
Her 14-year-old son completed sixth grade. Instead of attending school, he now works with a handcart in the city to earn money for the family. Her daughters, aged eight, nine and 11, attend a tailoring centre to learn to sew.
“My husband’s death shattered our home and reduced all my hopes to dust,” Yasamin says. “My children have been deprived of an education.”
Since the Taliban returned to power, she says, she has repeatedly visited the General Directorate of the Pension Treasury to claim her husband’s pension and other service-related benefits.
Those visits have brought no result. Sometimes, she says, officials have told her to return another day; at other times, they have rejected her request.
“When I go to government offices to ask for my husband’s pension, they make excuses,” she says. “Some tell me that members of the former security forces are not entitled to pensions or other benefits from them.”
Yasamin says she has also faced harsh treatment during some of her visits. She says she has received no humanitarian assistance, while occasional help from neighbours and relatives is insufficient to meet the family’s needs.
Her eyes fill with tears as she speaks about her children. Finding enough food each day is difficult, she says, but their future worries her most.
“Since my husband was killed, my children and I have never had enough to eat,” she says. “But I worry most about their future. They have been deprived of an education and are living in terrible conditions.”
Years of fighting between the former Afghan government’s security forces and the Taliban left many women responsible for supporting their families after their husbands were killed. For Surayya and Yasamin, that responsibility has been compounded by financial hardship and unsuccessful attempts to obtain benefits related to their husbands’ service.
Under procedures approved in 1398 (2019–20) by the former government’s State Ministry for Martyrs and Disabled Affairs, benefits for the surviving families of military personnel killed in service were calculated at 100 per cent of the deceased’s final monthly salary, including allowances and supplementary payments.
The procedures also provided for a one-time payment equivalent to 12 months of the final salary, including allowances and supplementary payments, payable by the institution where the deceased had last served.
Surayya and Yasamin say they have received no benefits related to their husbands’ service since the Taliban returned to power. As they struggle to meet daily expenses, their children are learning trades or working to help support their households. Both mothers fear that the education their children have lost will leave them with few choices in the years ahead.
We made repeated attempts over the course of a week to contact spokespeople for Afghanistan’s General Directorate of the Pension Treasury and the Ministry of Defence for comment, but our calls went unanswered.
