Wazhma Frogh on Afghan Women’s Peacebuilding Under Taliban Surveillance

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/02/14

Wazhma Frogh is an Afghan human-rights lawyer and women’s rights advocate focused on inclusive peace and security. She served on Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and has briefed the UN Security Council on Afghanistan. In 2009, the U.S. Department of State honored her with the International Women of Courage Award.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Frogh about women-led peacebuilding beyond Kabul, the limits of symbolic inclusion, and how Afghan women adapt under surveillance—through home classrooms, discreet clinics, and mutual-aid networks. Frogh’s guiding principle is simple: “Drop by drop, the river forms.”

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You helped build a human rights organization during a difficult political era. What are some assumptions that you had about how change happens in the past, and how has experience changed or corrected your framework of how you see change happening?

Wazhma Frogh: I co-founded it in 2011 to ensure women’s voices were included in peace and security processes. Even when I speak publicly, despite my efforts, sometimes people still link the organization to me.

That puts the organization in jeopardy, and that is why they were questioned. My colleagues became worried. They called me and explained what was being asked. We said no, we have no connection with her. We do not know her.

It is risky for them, so please do not use the organization’s name. It is a local women’s civil society group. My story of change goes beyond my organization. It goes back to when we were refugees in Pakistan in the 1990s, when I was a recent high school graduate.

I began working with Afghan refugees and later organized community-based empowerment programs for women while living in Peshawar. I returned to Afghanistan in 2001 after the fall of the Taliban and continued my work with Afghan women’s rights and peacebuilding.

I have worked with women’s networks in Afghanistan and served as a member of the Afghanistan High Peace Council, appointed by the President. My advocacy over two decades has included pushing for women’s meaningful participation in security sector reform, such as the recruitment and retention of women in the police, and ensuring their inclusion in peace negotiations.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of State awarded me the International Women of Courage Award for my work advancing women’s rights.

Over time, I realized that peace cannot be achieved solely through military force. Peace requires including women and communities in decision-making because they hold perspectives essential to sustainable peace and security.

I am 43 now, and my whole life has been shaped by war, unrest, and civil conflict in Afghanistan. In 2009, I began focusing more on building local peace from a women’s perspective—women coming together to identify security threats, address the root causes of conflict in their communities, and push the government to respond. That became my central focus.

I co-founded the organization in 2011, focusing on women, peace, and security. I went beyond Kabul because visiting the provinces and rural areas was essential to me. Much of my worldview about Afghanistan has been shaped by what I saw in villages outside the capital. Kabul was relatively stable, but in the provinces, governance failures were a major driver of extremism, and corruption was another major factor.

We kept pushing for women to enter provincial leadership. For example, by 2020–2021, shortly before the Taliban takeover, our work helped appoint 21 women as deputy governors in provinces such as Herat. I am still in contact with many of these women.

After the Taliban takeover in 2021, I changed my strategy because not all these women were able to leave the country. Many do not speak English, but they are community leaders. We reconvened in September 2021 and asked ourselves: do we close like everyone else, or do we continue? The women said they needed support and wanted to continue. Since then, I have been fundraising for them, providing training, and organizing mobilization and support.

The organization continues to operate in Kabul with around 75 staff members, and more than 1,000 women are involved in different projects across various provinces. A great deal of work is still happening inside the country.

Jacobsen: There are two ways we can talk about women’s inclusion: symbolic or meaningful. How do we avoid symbolic inclusion and ensure that participation is meaningful in civil society, professional life, and beyond?

Frogh: We initially began with symbolic inclusion, primarily through legal quotas and pressure from the international community. But after 2021, when the Taliban took over, if women’s participation had only been symbolic, the resistance and organizing by women inside Afghanistan would have disappeared overnight. Women have been removed from government positions and from many areas of public life, but they have not stopped doing the work they were doing before.

Women are educating girls at home. I work with women who have turned their living rooms into classrooms, and with women running home-based self-help groups for victims of violence. We have nurses who run home-based clinics for domestic violence survivors because the Taliban do not allow many women to access public hospitals.

Women are doing a tremendous amount, but the painful part is that I cannot publicly talk about their work because Taliban surveillance is intense. They uncover connections quickly. If I speak at a conference and mention an organization or activity, they can trace the link.

Their surveillance capabilities are extensive. We are highly cautious about what we share because two of my colleagues have been detained in the past four years. One case was harrowing. We are constantly aware that lives are at risk.

Jacobsen: Are the Taliban receiving assistance in expanding their surveillance apparatus?

Frogh: Yes.

Jacobsen: From whom?

Frogh: By China and Pakistan. For example, when my colleagues report to the Ministry of Economy or the Ministry of Finance, they see Pakistani technical experts working there who match bank accounts with project records. Many of the projects we run are focused on women’s rights and human rights, so we do not formally register them. When colleagues present four official projects for the year, officials pull up bank records and say, for example, that $400,000 was received and ask where the rest went. The level of information they have is shocking. My colleagues often tell me how surprised they are by the detail the authorities possess. Pakistanis are heavily involved in the Ministry of Finance. In telecommunications, the Chinese are deeply engaged, providing software and systems that help the Taliban crack encrypted platforms.

Jacobsen: Hardware and physical systems—such as cameras—are those being expanded as well?

Frogh: Last year, in neighbourhoods where there is strong anti-Taliban sentiment and non-Pashtun communities, especially in northern Kabul, where many Tajiks live, they installed roughly 9,000 surveillance cameras in an area with a population of about 15,000 people.

Jacobsen: Almost one camera for every one-and-a-half to two people.

Frogh: Exactly.

Jacobsen: Afghanistan’s women have faced some of the most challenging conditions of any group in recent history. What forms of resistance work, and which have proven ineffective through experience?

Frogh: I come from a pacifist background, and throughout my career, I have believed in finding common ground. But in the past four years, conventional forms of resistance have not worked. Under the former republic, civil society, women’s groups, and journalists used tactics that pressured a government that was relatively democratic and responsive to public voices. The Taliban are different. They operate as a traditional insurgent movement with a guerrilla mindset. Some states and organizations have found ways to work with them—China, Japan, Qatar, Pakistan, and now India—because they avoid sensationalizing issues and do not push matters into the media.

Many NGOs led by Afghan women, including those run by women who returned as expatriates, still operate in Kabul. The Taliban tell them they can work as long as they do not publicly challenge the Emirate. If they are seen as a threat, they are shut down, but if they support communities quietly, they are allowed to continue. Some women feel they can work freely; others cannot work at all due to surveillance. Those who participated in protests or whose social media activity raises suspicion are monitored closely.

I have censored myself on social media for the past four years because I have family and colleagues on the ground, and their safety depends on what I say publicly.

Frogh: There are different ways to resist, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach under the current regime. The Taliban have strengthened their position over the past four years. They have substantial regional support: China is with them, Russia supports them, Pakistan has supported them for decades, and India is now engaging with them as well. Some Central Asian republics—Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, among them—also engage with the Taliban. These are the relationships the Taliban want. They are less interested in countries like Norway or Sweden, though the United States remains essential to them. They have grounded themselves, and in the meantime, we have lost four years. Our girls have lost four years. Female doctors cannot work.

We are helping Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, connect with health practitioners on the ground. These meetings are painful. Many of the women we speak with are in their fourth year of medical education and have been unable to complete their studies, yet their resilience is extraordinary. They are volunteering in hospitals, taking internships in clinics, and continuing to work in any way they can. They dream of a day when they will finish their studies and receive their qualifications.

Jacobsen: They want to live their lives. I heard a story about a girl who intentionally failed her exams so she could repeat the year and continue her education, because stopping was worse than repeating. This leads to a key question you have hinted at: how do you balance diaspora advocacy with the responsibility not to increase the risk to women in Afghanistan?

Frogh: It is a highly challenging balance. I speak with colleagues on the ground every morning—today at four o’clock, for example. I listen to them, understand the issues they raise, and convey those concerns in my interactions with international organizations and institutions.

At the same time, I am critical of how the Afghan diaspora has often failed to elevate the voices of women and girls inside the country. There have been internal battles within diaspora networks that have distracted from the needs on the ground. I try to stay away from these diaspora dramas because they have, at times, caused harm rather than support.

For example, some diaspora groups have advocated for a total ban on aid to Afghanistan. But the people harmed by that are ordinary Afghans, not the Taliban. The Taliban do not provide funding to local organizations. They tell us openly that if we close, they do not care. Our only funding sources are international foundations and organizations. When support is cut, it is the population—not the Taliban—who suffer.

Another problem is the narrative that Afghanistan is the Taliban. That is not true. The Taliban may have around 100,000 to 120,000 armed men, but nearly 40 million people are living in Afghanistan who are experiencing multiple crises. And these crises were not created solely by Afghans. NATO countries fought in Afghanistan for twenty years and contributed to the conflict and destruction. Canada, the United States, and all NATO countries share responsibility for the current situation, including resource depletion and instability.

We often forget this responsibility. The needs on the ground are far larger than the political debates happening outside the country. Afghanistan faces ongoing humanitarian crises, and people cannot withstand them. When your child is sick, and you do not have food, you do not think about democracy.

Jacobsen: The old saying is that morals are much easier with a full stomach.

Frogh: Exactly. Right now, people are struggling through a cold winter and a humanitarian crisis. Many have nothing to feed their children. The health sector is collapsing because UN agencies that previously supported it have had their funding cut. All of this has deeply affected people on the ground, yet we rarely hear about it.

Jacobsen: Are there any Afghan aphorisms that capture your mentality about moving forward and continuing your work?

Frogh: My motto is Katra, Katra darya mesha — drop by drop, the river forms. I do one small thing each day to help and to make something happen. For example, today we helped one of our members join online English classes. Many girls are eager to learn English and access the internet. We rely on low-cost smartphones and volunteer teachers. We found two volunteers — one based in Vancouver and one who teaches at a university. She agreed to spend 1 hour a week preparing. Small steps like that matter. I believe that each drop a day makes the river, and that is the principle guiding my work in Afghanistan now.

Jacobsen: I love it.

Frogh: I have always worked that way.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Frogh: Thank you so much.

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