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Karen Bartlett, "Escape from Kabul: The Afghan Women Judges Who Fled the Taliban and Those They Left Behind" (New Press, 2025)
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C
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. Today I'm joined by Karen Bartlett and we're going to be discussing her new book the Escape from A True Story of Sisterhood and Defiance published by the New Press in North America and Duckworth in the UK, Australia and New Zealand in August 2025. We're discussing the book in its entirety today. So this is just a little spoiler alert. I highly recommend reading the book before listening to this episode or if you want to get a little taster, keep listening. So welcome Karen, if you would please tell us a bit about yourself and about the book we're talking about today.
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D
Well hello Nina, thank you very much for inviting me on the podcast. Yes, I'm Karen Bartlett. I am a journalist and writer. I've written five other non fiction books. But because I started working many years ago with an NGO and a think tank and was involved a little bit in what was happening in Afghanistan back then and also I have written quite a lot about women's rights around the world, this was a really meaningful book for me.
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C
Okay, amazing. And how did it come to you? More concretely, how did you get in contact and learn about the women judges who this book features?
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D
Well, as I said, particularly as a journalist and writing feature articles for the Times newspaper, I wrote quite a lot of features about women around the world who were being very active in kind of challenging stereotypes, taking on different challenges. And so I was particularly interested in this story, the story of kind of women being judges and also women helping other women. Obviously, at the time of the evacuation itself in the summer of 2021, and after that, it was a very kind of immediate news story. But then, you know, things went very quiet and we didn't really hear any more about it. So I contacted the judges, the international judges to start off with, and I really started talking to them about, you know, what is this story, what happened? Could I talk to some of the Afghan judges themselves? And then it just quickly became apparent that, yes, there's the story of the evacuation, but there's also a much, much bigger story to be told about the work and the lives of those women in Afghanistan, for sure.
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C
So for the listener, the book basically features a group of acts, Afghan women judges, and their journey of escaping Kabul and escaping Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021 after international forces left. And you open the book with this Escape from Kabul, which it's also named after. Can you tell me a little bit about the decision to open the book in that way and how it kind of like sets the tone?
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D
Well, I think the story of the evacuation was the one that we understood people would be sort of very immediately interested in. It was something that they might recall from 2021 hearing about because there was quite a lot of news coverage as the judges and other public figures like the International Bar association tried to raise awareness about it and the need to get these women out. So there is that sort of almost thriller like quality of are these women going to be able to escape from this terrible jeopardy that they're in? And how on earth are people going to actually manage to get them out? So that had to be a sort of a backbone of the book. But then, you know, the more that I talked to those women, the more I realized that the real story was about them and their work. And I think, you know, as time passes, that's going to be sort of the aspect of the book that people find most interesting.
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C
Totally agreed. I think you're totally right. It has such a thrilling, suspenseful element to it in the beginning when we learn about their evacuation because it's so urgent. But then reading about their backgrounds was really fascinating. Could you tell us a bit more about what the judicial system in Afghanistan was like before the Taliban came in 2021. And the types of cases that these women judges were working on.
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D
Yes, I mean, to go back even a little further than that, Afghanistan has had women judges since the very late 1960s. And what I discovered when I was researching the book is that that was actually about the same period that quite a lot of other countries were starting to have women judges in more numbers. So in that sense, Afghanistan wasn't really that, that unusual compared to other places. And then two of the characters in the book obviously were judges long before the Taliban had even taken power in the 1990s, the first time. So there was a sort of a first, early kind of cohort of women judges who, you know, took up their positions in the 1980s, then during the first Taliban period in the 1990s, which we're all kind of familiar with from seeing those images on TV of the women in the blue burqas and the sort of atrocities that were happening then. Women were not allowed to be judges. They were banned from being judges. Then immediately after 9, 11 and the US and NATO offensive began in Afghanistan, the first thing that happened was that women judges came back and became judges again. And so the main part of this book deals with that kind of 20 year period where you had the older judges who picked up their roles again and then you had a kind of a new cohort of younger women who were starting to enter judicial life. I think one of the things that people will find quite different about the book and about the judges is that obviously a lot of them are really young. In the US and North America and Europe and the uk, we're used to the idea that, you know, people become lawyers first and then after kind of many years they're appointed to the bench and they become judges. And you know, they can be kind of in their 50s when that happens. It's a different system in Afghanistan. After you qualify as a lawyer, you can choose to take a two year training course to be a judge. And these women obviously did that. They then after those two years, they, they become a judge and they start, they start working in a kind of junior level as a judge in the system. It was explained to me that really, you know, if you're going to compare that to the us, it would be like kind of similar to a role as a sort of judicial clerk, but they're not clerks, they are actually judges. So yes. So one of the things that's very noticeable is the judges are much younger. They have a different judicial system in a Lot of other ways, which I do kind of spell out for people who are lawyers who are interested in understanding what the differences are to the UK and the us. I think also one of the things that you realise when you read the book is that these judges have come in from sort of two different routes. Usually there is the civil law school route and there is the Sharia law route. And the judges in the book are usually a mixture of people who've done both. And they explain that their reasons for this are kind of quite varied. It depended on where they were accepted, where they could study and, you know, at the end they were judges and they talk about, they explain kind of in practice how it worked in Afghanistan, being a judge working with civil law and then also having kind of Sharia law element to it as well. So that's another sort of quite interesting part of the book as they explain how that works in practice. The judges themselves in the book cover all sorts of different areas of law in the court system. So two of the judges are very prominent in terms of the courts for the elimination of violence against women, which is particularly interesting because those laws were really reformed, they were brought in, they were very much encouraged by the US and the UK in particular to have set up and run those courts during that period. But there's also a very senior judge in the book who was on the narcotics court. There's someone who was in the anti corruption court. And we also have a judge who I include her story in quite a lot of detail, who was sort of dealing with commercial cases. So I wanted to make sure that I'd kind of covered a whole range of judges working in all sorts of different areas and not just the kind of the ones that are, I think, particularly interesting from a political point of view, which are things like the courts of the elimination of violence against women. So you would get a sort of full. A full view of kind of what the legal system is and also all of the different courts and cases that these women worked on, for sure.
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C
And you very much get the impression that no matter what court you're in, it was very challenging for them and they faced a lot of obstacles, both from the people who they were residing over and also their colleagues. Is there kind of like one case that stands out to you which kind of like illustrates these challenges?
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D
Yes. I mean, just to. I suppose what I should say sort of further to my other answer as well that's important for people to know is that there are no juries in Afghanistan. All the judges appear in a panel of three, they hear the cases and then they decide between themselves what they believe the verdict is and write up their answer. So that's also a pretty different system. So they're very much responsible for the verdicts and the decisions that they reach.
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C
And also sometimes they're the ones who can be the tiebreaker as well, right?
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D
Yes, exactly. And then you have the sort of the tension between the three when they disagree or when they take their verdict, and it's kind of sometimes overruled by more senior judges. So there was a lot of those sort of tensions that they faced as well. In terms of the cases, I think I found I tell the story in quite a lot of depth about Anisa Rasooli, who's one of the most senior, probably judge in the book, who was actually nominated twice to be on the Afghan Supreme Court. And she talks a lot about, she was very instrumental in reforming the laws relating to women and children. And she talks about a case which, which I found really fascinating about sort of two boys who'd been playing with each other and one of them had climbed a tree and had got hit on the head with a stone and had unfortunately died. And this wasn't actually, he wasn't actually murdered by the other boy, but the family of the victim, the boy who died, blamed the other boy and said that sort of by recompense, they wanted to take the daughter from the family as kind of restitution. And Aneesa explained to me that this was sort of quite a common practice in Afghanistan. And for her, this was a case that was sort of like really important to her in terms of changing that law and, you know, reforming laws relating to women and children, particularly girls, and saying, you know, you can't claim, you know, essentially children, girls to be sort of taken into other families. In this case, I think we're talking about like an 8 year old girl and they wanted to marry her off to a like 45 year old man. And, you know, these people had been kind of like chased from town to town as they were sort of pursued to do this. So that was a sort of a very sort of fascinating case. There's also, I think, you know, a lot of the cases that gave me insight in terms of Nafisa Kabuli, who was also a very senior judge. She talked about her work on the sort of narcotics courts and, you know, she would talk about sort of how is it even possible to enforce those laws and oversee those cases when there is so much corruption in the system. And she talks about, you know, one Police chief who would sort of drive around town with his car, his official police car, stacked with drugs that he would sort of was sort of carrying from place to place in his car. And sort of so many instances like that, which I think in all of the cases that they described to me, there was this kind of. This thread of corruption, this kind of deep rooted corruption in every aspect that they had to try and kind of navigate and find their way around, which I think was sort of more challenging than the cases themselves, to be honest.
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C
Yes, I remember some of the judges talking about how they would be very proud of making a ruling in a case and feel that that was the right decision, and then it would immediately be overturned in appeals or the next case come in and the corruption would be just as bad, if not worse. And that's when they realized it was a systematic problem. It was also fascinating to hear about them being stationed in the different areas or regions of Afghanistan. Can you tell me a bit more about kind of the differences between. Because it's a massive country and most people don't have very deep knowledge of the different regions.
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D
Yes, I mean, I think their work was so difficult on so many levels. And obviously, you know, they, they took up their roles and there was a lot of hostility to them being women judges. And that kind of hostility played out in kind of a lot of different ways. And one of the ways was that they were usually sent to the most controversial courts in the most dangerous areas. And there are sort of various reasons for that. And firstly, they needed more judges outside Kabul in the main areas. Those usually weren't very popular postings because they were dangerous. They were sort of far out. People didn't like the idea of there being women judges anyway, so they were quite happy to send them to dangerous places where their lives were going to be in danger. And also, as they explained to me, there wasn't. They couldn't. Judges couldn't. If they were corrupt, they couldn't profit from being in those areas in the same way that they could profit from being in Kabul. So, you know, a lot of the other courts were really sort of coveted by the more corrupt judges because they knew they could take cases where they could sort of exercise their corruption and profit from those cases. Whereas, you know, going to a remote area to be in a court for violence, the elimination of violence against women, probably very little opportunity to profit from that or take corruption. So there was a lot of reasons why those women were sort of sent to those regions and sort of were taken on in those taken on in those courts. Rehana Atahi, who's also one of the main judges featured in the book, who's a younger judge. Her story is very much around sort of taking part in the courts for the violence, elimination of violence against women. And she describes how, you know, she went to sort of her first province and it was quite difficult, but she actually then requested to go to Nangahar, which is a place that's so dangerous to go to. You know, even when she went to sort of make the request, the guy that she made the request to said, look, I come from Nangahar and I'm just telling you, don't go there. You know, it's a terrible idea. You know, you won't be safe, you'll be attacked. You know, don't do it. But she was really determined to sort of to go there because she believed that she was needed there to make a difference. And she talks about the sort of, you know, even going from quite a conservative province to Nangahar, which has, you know, a different type of covering that she had to wear, which she really hated wearing because it was really, really hot and she couldn't see anything. She couldn't hardly even walk in it. She lives in this kind of enclosed courtyard of houses that's connected to the court, like a sort of a compound, basically. And in all the time that she's there, she can never, you know, leave the compound and walk around freely. She's completely restricted to living in that compound for her own safety. And, you know, even then she's sort of faced with very conservative attitudes of the other judges who she's working with, who are sort of very personally very warm and welcoming to her and their families are very sort of welcoming to her, but are kind of a bit incredulous that a woman wants to take on this role. And she tells these kind of, as she gets to know these other judges better, she talks about the kind of entrenched attitudes that she faces on a sort of day to day basis. You know, like one of her colleagues who, who wants to take a second wife and she's trying to sort of persuade him not to take a second wife. And he's saying, well, it's sort of my culture. I'm kind of expected to do it and I think I have to do it. And another one of her colleagues who is having a problem because his wife wants, he wants to get his wife a ring. And he tells this story of how he has to go backwards and forwards from the house into town to get this ring. And you know, he goes, and first she doesn't like it so he has to take it back. And then it doesn't fit and she has to take it back. And he does this literally like four or five times. And she's listening to this endless saga of him getting this ring. And she said, you know, but why can't your wife just go and choose the ring and see if it fits herself? Like, wouldn't that be easier than all of this? And he says, no, of course not. My wife couldn't possibly go out and go to a shop. So it's sort of those kind of day to day anecdotes of their lives that I think kind of shed light on kind of what it was really like to live there on a daily basis.
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C
Yes, for sure. And also it's such a good example of a different mentality where it's like, you know, on the surface it's a very sweet gesture to want to get his wife a ring, but from our perspective it's just so baffling, like, why can't she just come to the shop with you? So, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. I also think that another interesting fact that you explained was that in some of the like, for example, you say this judge, she had been in two different regions and in some of the kind of like more stable regions, the court for violence against women or other courts, they would see cases like inheritance, like women claiming their inheritance, which they do have a right to in Afghanistan or, or they did, but in places like Nangarha it would purely be cases of violence and murder and suicide a lot of the time, which obviously is a very sad contrast. Another element which was really interesting to learn about with regards to the judicial system was this entrance exam to university, the Cankor. Right. So basically, I mean, you can tell me what that is and kind of what role it plays. And it was really interesting to learn about all the educational backgrounds of these judges. For example, I think it was Rayhana that came from a mountain town where her father actually ended up setting up a school.
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D
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things, obviously we've talked about it with the different courts is that just the diversity of the judges and their experiences at work and also their educational backgrounds and the key judges who really tell their stories in a lot of depth in the book come from very different backgrounds. So Aneesa Rasuli, who I talked about, who's the most senior judge, she grew up in this sort of, this beautiful sort of idyllic valley province. Yes, but she also comes from an extremely well known family in Afghanistan. Her family are sort of well known lawyers and doctors. And she comes from a very sort of almost like an establishment sort of type of esteemed family. By contrast, you've got Nafisa, who's sort of, I think, slightly younger than Anissa, but kind of that same age group. Nafisa is much more of a kind of scrappy city girl. Her father was a printer for a printing company in Kabul, so they weren't sort of an establishment family. But he used to come home with all the kind of the newspapers at the time and would kind of introduce her to reading and kind of this sort of breadth of different opinions that were out there in the world that sort of she was exposed to. And also she tells the story of how her mother died when she was tragically just a little girl. But her mother, who was a very traditional Afghan woman culturally, never even had her photo taken because she didn't believe in that. But the one thing she did say was that and Nafisa had to go to school, had to be enrolled in school, and she was enrolled in school. And then her father kind of encouraged her with her education. And she very much, for most of the time that she was growing up, actually wanted to be a policewoman because there was a local policewoman who sort of inspired her. But her father sort of explained to her, well, look, you know, if you're a, if you're a police woman, all you kind of do is arrest people and that's the end of the story. But if you're a lawyer or a judge, then, you know, you get to kind of work on their cases. You influence things, you decide things. It's a much more interesting career. So, you know, there's a, there's a very much a contrast between even the older judges, the younger judges you have, as you say, Rehana. Now, the other interesting thing which I try to talk to in the book is the sort of the ethnic differences in Afghanistan. Most of the women judges are from the Hazaras, which is a kind of a very much persecuted ethnic group within Afghanistan. There are a few judges who are from the sort of predominant Pashtun community, but not so many. Most of them are from either the Tajiks, who are sort of less persecuted than the Hazaras, but still not the dominant Pashtuns, or the Hazaras themselves, who have suffered a huge amount of persecution. So Rihanna comes from a Hazara family and she talks a lot about the sort of that double aspect of being persecuted for being a girl, but also persecuted for being a Hazara, and what that sort of very different experience is like. And, yeah, she grows up in this very small village in a very mountainous region, and she sort of tells the story about how occasionally they would kind of see a plane flying way, way, way overhead, and that would be their kind of only link to the outside world. And they'd kind of wonder if people on the plane would be looking down at them, and they'd sort of shake hands and wonder were they sort of shaking hands on the plane. And she talks about being in Afghanistan as a young girl growing up during the first Taliban era, and how she was banned from school and how her local community kind of tried to find ways around that, and how her father was kind of quite an instrumental person in their local community in terms of having to mediate between the community and the Taliban regime. So she has a fascinating story about growing up in that village, and I think there are a couple of anecdotes that really sort of stayed with me. One was her story, which was a sort of a fable, really, that they're all taught about this young girl who realizes that life's very difficult as a girl, and she wants to be a boy, and she has to cross a rainbow to be a boy, but she also has to lose her leg, and she has to decide, you know, is it better to be a boy with one leg than it is to be a girl? And. And then I think the other story that's really stayed with a lot of people who've read the book has been about the woman in her village who was divorced by her husband. And she talks a lot about sort of all the young girls and women around her who kind of married very young, and she can see how their lives are changed very sort of severely by their marriages. And so she talks about this. This young woman who she knew, who was married and who supported her family, while her husband, quite a lot of the Hazara men have to leave and would traditionally even go and work in Iran as laborers to raise money for their families. So she kind of. This woman sort of bore the burden of all of that. And then her husband eventually came back and they built a house and they had children. And then he decided that he wanted to take a second wife, so he took a second wife. And this is quite often the case. This was a very unhappy arrangement. And the first wife was divorced, and she was cast out of her home. And also, what was also a huge issue for women in Afghanistan that quite often these judges had to contend with was that if they did want to get divorced for any reason, they would almost always lose custody of their children. So even if they were divorcing their husbands because they were very violent to them or even threatening their lives, women were really reluctant to ever get a divorce because they knew they would never see their children again. So this was kind of. She talks about this as being another very crucial lesson that she learned at an early age from sort of seeing this in her village. And then the other young judge who features very prominent in the book is called Tabor Pasa. Tayba was a judge in the commercial court. But Tayba is really interesting because her family went to Iran during the first Taliban era in the 1990s. And so she actually talks about what it's like to get her sort of primary education in Iran and then for her family to decide to come back to Afghanistan after 2001, and what her experience was like kind of returning to Afghanistan and how she found coming back to a country that she never lived in and then getting her sort of her education from that point on. So they all have very sort of diverse and different experiences.
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C
Yes. And it's really fascinating to hear about their backgrounds. So another element of the book is that during their evacuation and also before their evacuation, they have this really great relationship with the International association of Women Judges. And they do actually, before the Taliban comes back in 2021, they do a couple of exchanges where mainly Afghan women go to visit judges in the US but also at one point, I think American judges come to Afghanistan. And out of that, you talk about kind of like some quite funny anecdotes that come to light. Is that also something that. Did they also find the humor in those experiences?
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D
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things about this book is that obviously there's very traumatic and difficult topics, but all of the Afghan women judges were really warm and witty and humorous people, and their lives were not, you know, their lives were full of the same humor and family dramas and the situation is that everybody else's life is full of. And so I wanted to kind of try and bring that into the book so that it wasn't just a book about horror and torture and trauma. And as you say, I mean, they. They actually did many exchanges between the US and Afghanistan, sort of starting in the 1990s. And every year, a kind of a group of Afghan women judges would travel to the US Courtesy of this program with the International association of Women Judges, and they would spend three weeks there, part of that time in Washington, D.C. where they would sort of visit a lot of prominent courts and kind of do quite kind of official activities. And then part of the time with Judge Patty Whalen in Vermont. And she kind of organized that part of the trip as sort of a homestay. So the women would kind of separate out and they would stay with women from different professions, not just judges, in their homes, and they would sort of visit the court in Vermont as well and understand about the sort of judicial system in Vermont. But they would also visit all sorts of other places, like local maternity hospitals. They wanted to know how. What were parking meters for? How did parking meters work? You know, the kind of. They wanted to know kind of what was ordinary American life. So they would go bowling and they did yoga and they did dancing, and they wrote poetry and. Yeah, I mean, Patti has sort of. Patti and the Afghan churches have amazingly sort of humorous stories about the times that they spent together. And Patti being Patti, I mean, she's a force of nature. So you kind of have to meet her to understand all that she is. But at one point, she decides to teach one of the Afghan women to drive, because it turns out that they don't know how to drive, but they want to. And in the process, they demolish this barn, which is sort of the home of a very. Sort of a college barn, where they have these, like, homage to the cross country skiing team, which is very famous. And they basically take off in this car and drive through the side of the barn. So that's kind of a lovely story. And then there's another story that she tells about how one of one of the clerks in her court is a lesbian woman who has children with her partner. And so the Afghan woman judges says, well, but how have they had. How do they have children together? And so Patti starts to describe kind of what she says in Vermont is called a man in a can. And this whole. She starts to go into this whole process and this. And her just like, screaming, no, no, stop. You can't tell me this. I don't even know. You know, she said, I don't even know how babies come from the other way. And she's an unmarried woman. And so they get into this discussion of, like, but how. She's like, but how can you be a judge sitting on rape cases if you don't know where babies come from? And so this kind of leads into a discussion about Afghan culture and being a judge on those cases, and then also kind of Afghan culture and women more generally, and they sort of. They learn from each other. They. I think they were both the Afghan women and the US Women who talked to me about these exchanges. What they all wanted to stress was that they sort of sat down together and they talked in a very sort of natural way. And they all learned so much from being together, sort of in their homes, talking about how they balance their budgets, who cooks the dinner, and all that kind of thing. And as you say, Patti gets to go back to Afghanistan to visit for the first time, to actually kind of meet those women, go to a conference, and kind of understand after years of hosting them in America, kind of what is it like to go to Afghanistan. And I think what she says, which is really sort of pertinent, is that she thought having hosted Afghan women and being close to them for so many years, that she really understood Afghanistan. And then she got there and she realized, like, she knew nothing about Afghanistan, and it was so much more complicated and nuanced than she'd realized. And I think this kind of comes out elsewhere in the book as well, when we talked about that kind of those layers of corruption that she realized that for those. For women, you know, it was constantly this sort of shifting. This shifting sands of allegiances, and they were constantly having to understand, you know, all of the nuances of their situation and who was allied to who and how to kind of how to navigate all of that. And she realized that, you know, as an American, as an outsider, she actually had no hope of understanding any of that. And she could see why, you know, NATO and sort of US And UK and European forces were having problems, you know, really having so many problems, kind of really understanding that country, because it was just impossible. And, you know, she was. She talks about. Obviously she went out and she went into Afghan homes and tried to be sort of a part of their lives, but was coming back every day to kind of an American compound and meeting people who'd been working there for years from America, who'd never been to a single Afghan person's house, had never eaten any Afghan food, and were really kind of like, living in their own kind of isolated bubble. So she kind of had a completely different perspective on the situation and how it was unfolding, having actually visited, as opposed to just hosting the homestays, for sure.
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C
I mean, I think multiple times in the book, it's mentioned that Afghanistan is a country with very little trust and how people. Yeah, it takes so much to navigate everything. And, yeah, I can't understand not having Afghan food, because that's one of the Things the judges talk about missing the most.
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D
Well, yeah, I have to tell you that having written the book and whenever I meet the Afghan judges, the first thing they do is cook amazing food. And it is the best food I have ever eaten. So. Yes.
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C
And the coffee as well and drinks and everything. It looks amazing. Yeah. And so basically these women judges, the International association of Women Judges, then once the Taliban, once it gets out that the Taliban is taking over Afghanistan, starting at the outer provinces and making their way into Kabul, I think every judge in the book kind of describes how in the beginning they're in complete denial because it's been 20 years of not having to deal with it, and then suddenly it's just there. And so the women judges, the international women judges essentially decide to dedicate their time to getting these Afghan women judges out. And one thing that the Taliban does that makes it extra dangerous for the women judges is that they open up the prisons and they let out every single person that the women judges have convicted. And the book talks about how they basically start getting phone calls of felons, being like, hey, remember me? You sentenced me to 20 years for Mass murder. Like, I'm coming to find you. And so obviously it's this pressure cooker of. Of complete emergency. What role did kind of like the international women judges play in getting the Afghan judges out?
- [38:38]
D
Yes, well, it's a story with many different facets, really. So as you say, the international women had had a long association with the Afghan women judges. And in the couple of years sort of leading up to 2021, they were working with them quite closely to help them form their own association. And they were doing a lot of sort of mentoring and kind of peer to peer sessions to learn from each other. So they were quite involved with them on a day to day basis. And I think how they saw that kind of unfolding and deepening is that they would give them more support to set up their association. They would help them with any resources that they needed. They would, you know, invite them to conferences. So they saw it sort of developing on those lines and then obviously during that time, they could see the security situation deteriorating. So. And it had been deteriorating for quite a long time leading up to the return of the Taliban. So judges were targeted, they were kidnapped, they were assassinated. It was dangerous. So there was a kind of a lead up to what happened. But all of the Afghan women judges say that they weren't expecting the Taliban to come back. And they were also expecting it to be a much more gradual process. They thought that it would happen sort of from the provinces, you know, slowly inward, perhaps eventually reaching Kabul, or there would be kind of a civil war like there had been before, which the older judges had already lived through. But what they were in complete shock about was that it happened within days. And so some of them who'd been in some of the outer provinces had already moved back to Kabul for their safety. But they weren't expecting this to sort of emerge as a complete crisis in a matter of a week that the Taliban are at the gates of Kabul, they're here, they've taken over. That was a huge shock. And during this, these sort of. These last few days, they were talking to the international judges quite closely anyway, because they were supposed to be attending a kind of spring, an international sort of spring conference, which due to the security situation, they were going to and Covid they were going to do remotely. So it was also a big shock to the international women judges that this was happening. And in their minds, they were suddenly having to, like, really quickly reframe from thinking, you know, what resources are we going to give these women and how are we going to support them professionally to how can we save their lives? And suddenly they felt that they were sort of called upon to do this. And Susan Glazebrook, who's a senior judge from New Zealand, sort of describes this as being, you know, well, I don't really know how to do this, but what am I going to say to these women? I can't say to them, you know, yes, I'll invite you to a conference and I'll give you some resources, but no, I'm not going to. You're on your own and I'm not going to save your life. She's like, we've got to. We know we're in this moment. These people are our friends. We've got to help them. And they were also expecting that these women would be evacuated. Everyone understood that they were on the front line. They were in terrible danger. The Taliban, firstly, didn't think there should be women judges. Secondly, these women had been active in the courts that the Taliban were most opposed to, like the terrorism courts and the courts for the elimination of violence against women. And as you say, thirdly, the Taliban had opened all the prisons, released the prisoners, and, you know, these murderers and killers were now, you know, ringing up and approaching these women judges and saying, I know who you are and I'm coming to get you and I'll get your family, too. So the international women at first thought, obviously the judges would be kind of pretty Much first on the flights to be evacuated out of the country. And then as the days progressed, it became clear that they weren't on those flights and kind of that, you know, official sources were not going to help them and that a kind of a more informal coalition of these women judges and a lot of help from other people was going to have to be put together to get these women out. And the international women judges sort of, I think their role in this was at that point during the evacuation itself, to coordinate all of the details of the women judges, find out basically who they were, who their families are, have they got all of the correct paperwork, can they prove, can they send things in advance to prove to their destination countries that, number one, they were judges and also, I suppose, secondly to claim to sort of prove that their lives were in danger and they needed to sort of get all this documentation out of the country because then they needed to destroy it, because the Taliban, if they found them and searched them, couldn't find any evidence that they were women judges in terms of raising money and actually, you know, booking flights to evacuate them and on the ground operations. There were a lot of other people involved in that part of the story. So the International Bar association and Helena Kennedy put together those evacuation flights and raised the money for them. Huge amount of money. It's like about £800,000 for a plane. And so a lot of very high profile donors gave money for that. There was also a group called Jewish Humanitarian Relief that got involved that was. Was pretty instrumental in helping fund and organise those evacuation flights and getting those women out across the border. And then they went on to kind of different countries in the first instance where they could go temporarily while they waited for their sort of final country of destination to be approved. So there was kind of this very sort of large voluntarily organized coalition of different groups and willing people who all sort of played a different part in actually getting those women out. And as I say, everything from local special ops teams who had to get them from safe houses in Afghanistan to the airport or to, however they were crossing the border to us, organizing those flights, paying for those flights and getting all of their details so they could actually be accepted in another country. So a massive and very difficult operation for sure.
- [45:23]
C
And you talk about a Polish lawyer as well, Anna, who basically feels called to help these judges and was going to take a career break, but ends up dedicating her time to helping to rescue them. And so quite a few of them end up in Poland because she gets them on the Polish evacuation list. So there's definitely also some underdogs in this story. There's some heroes. What are some other kind of surprising figures?
- [45:53]
D
Yes. I mean, I think, as you say, there were so many people who did things like that, and Anna is just one of them. But she was a great sort of illustration for the book, really, because, as you say, she's a lawyer, she's in Poland. She's not a human rights lawyer. She's never done anything like this before. And she's. She's feeling quite tired. She's taken her vacation. And she reads a story about this and thinks, you know, I've got to help these women. And also, as a Polish person, she explains that it's very kind of, like, seared in Polish memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War. And when she was reading about these women kind of being marked and their houses being marked by the Taliban as, like, houses to get people, she's like, no, no, no, I absolutely have to help. And so she tries to. She just rings up and tries to get in touch with the international women judges and says, I want to help, and they've never heard of her, and they have to try and figure out who she is and is she okay? Because obviously in all of this, there's also bad actors trying to get involved. And part of what the Iawj have to do is sort of suss out, you know, who are the people that we can trust and who are the people we can't trust, verify everything.
- [47:05]
C
I was quite by the. The phishing emails that the Afghan women judges would get from the Taliban. That's kind of like a new frontier of strategy I've never heard of.
- [47:16]
D
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. Yes, absolutely. And so they say to Anna, okay, yes, please, please help get these women to Poland. And she then has to bring up the. The foreign minister in Poland, which she also has no contacts in, and she sort of says she has to make, like, three different speeches, the speech of her life, as to why. To get these women out, because they're not convinced that, like, why. Why these women rather than any other women? And eventually they say, yes, okay, but then you have to kind of. You have to organize it, and, you know, you have to do it. And then she. She sort of basically devotes, you know, two years of her life, really, to getting these women to Poland. So there's a kind of very immediate thing of the ones that went to Poland, left from the airport in Kabul, some of the last flights that actually left from the airport. And she's got this enormous task of actually trying to get these women into the airport and onto a plane to Poland. And the book goes into a lot of very tense detail about how incredibly difficult that was. And then they arrive in Poland and of course they have nothing. And she has to find accommodation for them. She has to help them shop and kind of figure out how to restart their life. She gets embroiled in kind of helping them figure out, you know, whether they're going to stay in Poland, are they going to go to other countries, and how's the visa process going to work. So she basically has to give over, like, you know, two years of her life to, you know, this courts, which is quite amazing. And she says that at the end of it, she. She thinks, do I actually want to do this with my life? You know, do I want to completely change direction and be completely involved in kind of humanitarian missions, or do I still want to be a lawyer? Because it's kind of, you know, from an article that she read on her holidays, it's kind of taken over and transformed her life. And, yes, she's had to sort of act in amazingly heroic ways to. To make it happen.
- [49:15]
C
Yeah. And she ends up deciding not to go down. Humanitarian law.
- [49:20]
D
Right.
- [49:21]
C
She ends up deciding staying the course and that she just helps them out.
- [49:25]
D
On her own time.
- [49:27]
C
And where have these judges ended up now, and have they retrained or what's going on now?
- [49:33]
D
Well, there were sort of several major places that the judges were initially evacuated to. And I talk about Poland quite a lot, but equally, there were other places that I could have talked about just as much I didn't go into detail about. I mean, a lot of the judges went to Greece. I tended. I mean, it was such a vast subject, you know, and I couldn't kind of go into every single area. So a lot of judges went to Greece. A lot of the judges initially went to Poland. Quite a few initially went to Romania, some went to Spain. As time's gone on now, I think there's only a couple of them that are actually left in Poland. And similarly, they moved on from Greece as well. So those were kind of initial destinations. Most of the judges are now in the United States. There's also quite a lot in Canada. There's some in the uk. There are some in Australia, which I talk about, and in New Zealand. And I think most of them have really. Some have gone to Germany. I mean, they're in many places, but I think most of them, I think it's fair to say that the largest groups of them have gone to English speaking countries where they thought they could possibly also restart their careers in some way. So that's kind of another part of the book is kind of what happens, what happens in their lives when they get to these countries and can they, what, what can they do next?
- [51:05]
C
For sure. And just like coming to an end here, what kind of message would you like people to take from this book and where should we go from here in supporting the women judges? And what, what about Afghanistan?
- [51:21]
D
Yes, I mean, the, the latter part of my book talks quite a lot about the relation these women trying to restart their lives. And they all have. One of the nice things about the International association of Women Judges is that all of the judges, when they got to their destination, were partnered up with local women judges in those countries. So they all had kind of partner judges who have all kind of played a pretty big role in their lives. And those, you know, they haven't all formed deep friendships that wouldn't be sort of human nature. But a lot of them have formed kind of really deep relationships which again, both sides have learned a lot from. And many of them, particularly the younger women judges, are retraining for careers, certainly in law. Even if they're not judges, many of them want to sort of still work in the legal profession. But obviously restarting their lives has been very challenging too. And most of them are very worried about the situation in Afghanistan and worried about their kind of remaining extended family that's still in Afghanistan. So that's a sort of daily, a huge, daily worry for them, what will happen to their families. There are also still some women judges who are trapped in Afghanistan. The International association of Women Judges are committed to getting them all out, but as time has gone on, that's become very difficult. It's not just difficult because it's difficult to get them physically out of Afghanistan, but it's difficult because they have to have somewhere to go. The Iaw day doesn't evacuate the judges unless it has a proper destination that they can go to, so a legal, proper country that they can live in. And that is actually, I think, the most difficult part of the whole process, getting them visas to go to their next country. So from that point of view, the kind of the most immediate thing that they want is to evacuate those final women judges to safety because they're in terrible danger. They can't earn a living, they're living in hiding and they're in really dire circumstances. So that's a kind of an immediate practical thing that the Afghan Women judges and the IAWJ are working on, but broadly, I wanted to get the Afghan women to talk in the book about what they want for the future. It's not up to me to know what women in Afghanistan should want for their futures, but they know, and I think there were some things that came out of it really clearly. The older women judges are not. They understand the horrors of the situation, but they have a sense of hope for the future because they've seen this before. They've lived through civil wars. They've lived through the Taliban the first time. And what they said to me is, look, the Afghan people do not want Taliban rule. They hate the Taliban. They do not like the way that the Taliban has kind of ruined their religion, which is very important to them. But they understand that just like all things Afghanistan, this won't last forever. So they have a sense of optimism that they want to strive and work towards, and that doesn't in any way take away from kind of the horror of the situation at the moment. And I think what they are dismayed about is seeing a kind of normalization of the Taliban in the international community. You know, they feel like it's really important not to normalize the Taliban and to fully recognize the human rights abuses that the Taliban is sort of perpetrating on the Afghan people and particularly on women and girls in Afghanistan. And they're sort of. Yes, we believe that there are still things to hope for and work towards in the future, but please do not normalize this regime in any way and recognize, you know, the terrible atrocities and human rights abuses that are still being perpetrated and increasing sort of on a daily basis against women and girls in Afghanistan. And, you know, in some ways, I think in the whole. The whole book is sort of their sadness at being, in a way, abandoned by the world. You know, they so appreciate the solidarity that the IAWJ has shown them, that the International Bar association has shown them, that these groups have shown them, because they feel that they haven't had that solidarity from the international community more broadly. And so their message is, you know, please don't forget about us. We need to keep our story alive.
- [55:54]
C
Okay, yeah, for sure. And I'm sure they really appreciate this book for doing that. So that's really amazing.
- [56:03]
D
Yeah, yeah. So this book is. I mean, it's very much these women talking in their own words and telling their own stories. And also the majority of the proceeds of the book, should there be sort of proceeds, are going to support the ongoing efforts to get the women out of Afghanistan, so they're very grateful about that, too.
- [56:25]
C
Okay, that's great. And, yeah, definitely. Really good for the readers to know. So, yeah, go get yourself a copy. So how are you gonna kind of promote the book now? What are you up to now? Because it just came out one week ago. Right. So thresh off the press and.
- [56:43]
D
Yeah.
- [56:43]
C
Any closing remarks that you've got?
- [56:46]
D
Yes, well, we've got a pretty busy schedule of events and activities related to it. And I think, because as well as this being a book, it's also something that we do want to kind of keep alive for people and keep people aware of. So I would say certainly for the next few months, we're going to all be pretty active in talking about the book and telling these women's stories. And there's a lot of events happening in different countries with me and also with women judges themselves, because I want them to be. I want them to be telling their stories at all of these events. That's the important thing. So hopefully, if you are interested in the book, you should also be able to kind of come along to something near you and kind of meet some of these judges and hear their very inspiring stories in person.
- [57:33]
C
Okay, amazing. So you're going to be traveling to speak with them in public?
- [57:38]
D
Yes, yes, those plans are coming together at the moment, but we already have quite a few events in the UK in North America, and then hopefully in the spring or in their fall in Australia and New Zealand and some other places, too. So, yes.
- [57:53]
C
Okay, amazing. That's really exciting. So where can people find you? Where can they find out about this schedule?
- [58:00]
D
That's a good question. Actually, I haven't set up a schedule yet, but I should. I should probably add those details to my website with all the upcoming events, which I will do, which is karenbarthlett.co.uk, and I will make sure that I add all that information up there and then people can find out about it and hopefully come along and meet the judges.
- [58:20]
C
Amazing. Perfect. Well, thank you for much. Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Karen. It's been really wonderful and I'm sure I can't wait to go to one of your events.
- [58:31]
D
So.
- [58:31]
C
Yeah, thank you.
- [58:33]
D
Oh, well, I will look forward to seeing you there.