US abandons 27-year-old female mayor, other women it put in govt for Taliban to kill

As the Taliban overthrows Ashraf Ghani’s government, and the country toddles towards a civil war, top-ranking female public office holders are now in more dire positions.

The Taliban doesn’t accept women taking leadership roles. But during the western occupation of Afghanistan that blurred the Islamic country’s gender line, many women became public leaders calling the shots.

So it’s certain Zarifa Ghafari, Afghan’s youngest mayor, is already a target.

She knows it.

Ghafari, 27, the mayor of Maidan Shar, told a British newspaper Inews she had no plans to run away like Ghani did.

“I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family.”

The US and its allies have been evacuating their citizens from Afghanistan since last week.

None of the western countries has revealed a plan yet to help the western-styled Afghan politicians they put in place while the Taliban was under their military boots.

”I’m just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me. I can’t leave my family. And anyway, where would I go?” she said.

Ghafari was also Afghanistan’s first woman to hold the office in Maidan Shar in Wardak province.

Her father Ghafari, a top military officer, was killed last November.

Other female mayors are Azra Jafari, elected as far back as 2013; Salman Mazari, too, who sometimes, followed her security men to frontlines with the Taliban fighters.