KABUL (SW): The life of 45 years old Zeba Gul narrates the story of many young women in Afghanistan who bore the brunt of the civil war, ragging violence and insurgency in the country.
Zeba was just 17 when she married with a Hizb-e-Islami combatant in the 1990s. Her married life did not last long as her husband was killed in a remote area of the country due to the in-fight of various Mujaheden factions then. “By the time my husband was killed, my second daughter was not born and the first one was an infant”, she told Salam Watandar. “With the death of my husband, I lost all the property we had, so I moved to Kabul with my daughters”.
In Kabul, Zeba Gul got married for the second time.
“I was happy with my life and started a new life with my children when the war took away my second husband”, Gul said with a sad and grim face.
She was again left alone to also take care of a 16 days old boy. Gul’s second husband was a local militia fighter for the Jamiat-e–Islami party. “He left home on the eve of Eid to receive his salary, but on the way to Jamiat office, he was abducted by Hizb-e-Islami’s men, and since we have no knowledge about his whereabouts”.
She has been copping with all the difficulties of life alone for the past 22 years now. Gul has worked as cleaner in many offices and now works as female security guard at a non-government organization. The 45 year old Afghan widow has asked the government to put all the perpetrators of the civil war into trial. Gul is also terrified of Hikmatyar’s return. She said that the warlords might once again engage in a civil war and it might leave thousands of more women widow.
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