Digital Abuse and Silence: An Afghan Girl’s Fight to Speak Out
The “16 Days of Activism” campaign is a global movement aimed at raising awareness and ending gender-based violence against women and girls. Held annually from November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to December 10 (Human Rights Day), the campaign brings together countries, civil society organizations, and activists. This year’s theme, “United to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls,” emphasizes the urgent need to combat online harassment and discrimination.
The Rights Monitor Media will cover the campaign by sharing news, reports, personal stories, and reflections from Afghan women and girls, highlighting their experiences with violence and restrictions
By: Khadija
I was seventeen, a tenth-grade student—an age when you still see only the clean half of the world and want to discover the rest. Alongside school, I attended a calligraphy class. I used to write poems delicately in my notebooks. In class, we were divided into three groups: the active ones, the quiet ones, and those who hovered on the margins. I belonged to the active group; we debated and shared opinions, mostly during Islamic studies. One girl—my age and similar in appearance—always defended religion and tradition. To her, religion was sacred, politics essential, and mobile phones a threat. “Girls shouldn’t use phones,” she repeated. “Social media can lead people astray.” Back then, I thought she was simply strict; I didn’t yet understand the fear behind her words.
When the Taliban returned and closed the schools, I bought my first phone. Not for “misguidance,” but to stay connected with the world—to create, to write, to reclaim the social life that had been taken from me. I had just entered the online space. I followed news on Facebook, stayed in touch with classmates on WhatsApp and Telegram. I knew nothing of the darker side of society; no one had warned me. I didn’t know what intentions some people hid behind the screen.
A few months passed. One day, I liked a Facebook post about a book and left a comment. Hours later, when I came online, I saw someone had liked my comment and praised my viewpoint. That night he sent a friend request and a message. His profile photo showed a man in a suit—respectable, at least at first glance. I didn’t accept the request, but I opened the message. He complimented my artistic sense. When I thanked him, he immediately asked my age. I hesitated and didn’t open his messages again.
He kept writing, demanding to know why I wasn’t responding. He called several times late at night. When I didn’t answer, he insisted he meant no harm, that he only wanted to “get to know me.” But his tone soon shifted. The messages became laced with words I barely understood—first veiled sexual suggestions, then explicit demands. Messages that smelled more of desire than a normal talk. Once he wrote: “Send me a photo so I can see you.” I blocked him. It was the only defense I knew.
But it didn’t end. He returned with another account, sending strings of vulgar messages. Then another account, this time accusing me: “Good girls don’t wander on Facebook.” Worse were the insults he felt entitled to fling at me: “You talk to a hundred guys but reject me?” I blocked him again. The fourth time, he reappeared with a female profile picture: “Block me a hundred times, I’ll make a hundred accounts. I know your type. Stop acting innocent.”
Each time, the same demands, and when I didn’t respond, the same torrent of sexual insults.
I became afraid to open Facebook. I accepted no friend requests. Yet message requests kept coming. One day, using an account with a woman’s name, he wrote: “If you don’t reply, it takes one minute for me to find your home address… I know who you are.” Small words—but for a naïve girl, enough to settle fear deep into my bones.
Worst of all was the fear that my family might discover it. In a society that always blames the woman, my only thought was that if they saw such messages, they would take my phone—or blame me: “Why did you answer at the beginning?” I feared the religious girl in my class might be proven right: “Phones lead to misguidance.” That fear kept me silent. And silence prolonged the harassment.
Eventually, to keep the man behind the screen from finding me in real life and causing “disgrace,” I deactivated my Facebook account and stayed away for more than a year. But the fear didn’t disappear. Every time an unknown number calls or texts, I instinctively think it’s him—that he has found more information about me. I left all WhatsApp groups so no one would have my number. Even in study and art groups on Telegram, I participated with anxiety.
With time, and with a better understanding of society and myself, I realized the problem was never the phone. It was the society that sees women through a lens of desire and treats every digital interaction as an opportunity for sexual domination. I realized my silence was part of the same patriarchal structure that always finds the woman guilty.
That realization changed me. I didn’t abandon the phone; I used the same tool to find my path, to work, to write, to strengthen my voice. I didn’t stay silent in front of people who weren’t worth my silence—but I didn’t shout either. I simply continued forward, refusing to be pushed out of the modern world. As I grew older, I understood why society fears an informed woman: a woman who refuses silence, who doesn’t blame victims, who knows that online harassment is not an “incident” but a system—one designed to frighten women into obedience.
Nawal El Saadawi was right: “Ask any man what makes a good woman, and he will describe the qualities of a slave.”
