‘If you disobey this order, they will kill you’ … Basir Arian. Photograph: Mary Turner/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘If you disobey this order, they will kill you’ … Basir Arian. Photograph: Mary Turner/The Guardian How we survive Life and style I set up a free school for Afghan girls – and the Taliban blindfolded me and broke my nose and jaw When Basir Arian was summoned to the Taliban headquarters, he knew he had to go. To defy them meant death. The torture left him devastated and sure he had to leave the country
Prefer the Guardian on Google ‘I knew that sooner or later, they would come for me,” says Basir Arian. After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, he had set up an online English study programme for girls when they were banned from attending school. In May 2022, he was eating lunch in the western city of Herat, when he got a call from an unfamiliar local number. A Talib official told Arian to come to the intelligence directorate within 20 minutes and to bring his phone.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” he says. “If you disobey this order, they will kill you. You have to try not to make them angry.” He told a friend where he was going, and they hurriedly discussed what to do if he didn’t return.
Taliban fighters searched him at the gate. Inside, there was a huge courtyard with military vehicles. Armed Taliban with long beards and dusty slippers were everywhere; even the men sitting behind desks had guns. Arian tried to stay calm. He finds it very hard to talk about this part, but wants people to know what happened.
He was told to sit in a hallway, where he was left waiting for a few hours. Then a tall, bald young Talib called him into an office. Here, a senior official played a WhatsApp voice message in which Arian encouraged some of the students not to lose hope, to motivate them. He accused Arian of working with infidels, being a puppet of the west and “an apostate”. He insulted his appearance. Then he spoke to the tall Talib, saying: “Let’s teach him.”
View image in fullscreen ‘My dreams began because of my father’s belief in me’ … Arian aged 10. The tall young man blindfolded Arian and led him through a long hallway, down about two floors and into a basement room. He tied Arian’s hands. Arian could hear that two or three others were there. They spoke in Pashto: “His excellency says we must teach him a lesson.” They called him “an infidel”, and “a dog”. Something hard struck his nose and jaw – he realised it was the butt of a rifle – and he was kicked until he lost consciousness.
He came to, lying in a lot of blood. One of his fingers was broken, his upper body was beaten and his nose and jaw were badly injured. He asked to have his blindfold removed and his hands untied, which a different man did. He was in a small and very dirty cell.
A rian was born in 1997, in rural Afghanistan, near the border with Iran, into a community already broken by the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the civil war that erupted after it left in 1989. His father – a tailor – had a talent for maths, but only had a few years of primary education and wanted something better for his son. “My dreams began because of my father’s belief in me,” says Arian.
He remembers the excitement of walking with his cousins to the village’s first school, on the day it opened in 2003. There were no buildings, just tents, which – like the books, pencils, even the biscuits they were given at break – were all provided by the United Nati…