Mick Hartley

Women have been barred from medical training since December 2024.
This is a photo of me with Dr. Zeenat Karzai, Afghanistan’s First Lady in August 2002. She is a gynecologist by profession & worked in hospitals treating Afghan refugees in Pakistan before she married Hamid Karzai. I was working in the presidential palace press office, the first woman to hold that job after the first Taliban regime fell. I was able to meet with her and interview her. Dr. Zeenat was soft-spoken and smart. When I got up to leave, she filled my purse with candy, the way an aunt does.
A month later I wrote about her for Women’s eNews. Young Afghans wanted to see their First Lady in public, but President Karzai was worried about a conservative backlash. She was a doctor who wanted to work, and she stayed almost invisible.
In 2002 the worry was a woman being seen. Now it is a woman being named. A young Afghan woman today could not train to become the kind of doctor Dr. Zeenat is, and might not be allowed to see one.