LONDON — Afghanistan’s women are “fighting alone” against discrimination by the Taliban authorities and feel abandoned by the world, Afghan journalist Zahra Joya told AFP.

“I lost everything in my country five years ago,” she said in an interview in London.

The founder in 2020 of Rukhshana Media — a news agency which aims to amplify the voices and stories of Afghan women — the 34-year-old left Kabul in 2021 after the Taliban movement returned to power.

As the fifth anniversary of that day loomed, she has struggled to come to terms with how her homeland has changed.

“I really can’t see or can’t bear how (the) Taliban are celebrating our sorrow in Afghanistan. It is a heavy day and I wish strength and power to women and girls in Afghanistan.”

Joya, from the Hazara ethnic minority — historically one of the most discriminated groups in Afghanistan — recalled the shock of August 15, 2021, remembering “a scary time” and “horrible moment”.

The previous week, she had had lunch with a friend in a Kabul restaurant and walked around in the capital working as a journalist.

“Then the next week … I was in prison in my house,” she said, noting “the first thing” the Taliban government did for women was order them to stay home.

Joya had never imagined leaving her country, but shortly afterwards fled to Britain.

“From the Taliban perspective, everything — every single thing — about myself was wrong,” she explained.

“My dignity, my identity as a woman, my gender, my career as a journalist, and also my ethnicity as a Hazara woman.”