The City of Ryde is home to 140,000 people, but another 26,000 travel to Ryde each week for work. And one of those individuals is young, Afghan refugee Marwa Moeen, who helped 15 other girls and young women escape forced marriages.
Moeen shared her remarkable story with “Hendo” on Monday Morning Matters (1 December), moving us all.
When reflecting on her life prior in Afghanistan, Moeen said, “After six o’clock, after seven o’clock for women especially to be out there; outside, walking on the street, or buying stuff. For men it was okay, but for women it was not safe after the darkness to be outside.”
“We never know when we were going outside in the morning, we didn’t know in the nighttime—are we going to come back home or not,” Moeen furthered.
In 2021, American President Joe Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistan.
As per the White House Archives, “after twenty years, the United States had accomplished its mission in Afghanistan: to remove from the battlefield the terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11, including Osama bin Laden, and degrade the terrorist threat to the United States.”
However, this withdrawal was detrimental for many individuals’ livelihood, as the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
“Before Taliban took over the country, we had a different bombing situation, schools, kidnappings. The last bombing was very terrible in the university…we lost a lot of our friends. We lost a lot of the young generations.”
Regarding the Taliban, Moeen commented, “They’re not Muslim, they just make a religion for themself and they always ask for the men’s power.”
Have a listen to Marwa Moeen’s incredible story and how she and 15 other young women escaped Afghanistan.