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“It was midnight. My children had just fallen asleep when the noise started. The smell of smoke and burning filled the house. I woke the kids and rushed outside. The Kuchis had set fire to the homes. In the blink of an eye, the house I had built with years of hardship turned to ashes before my eyes. Nothing remained.”

This is the account of Gulnar, a 40-year-old woman who, in the spring of 2016, lost her rural home in a midnight Kuchi raid on Nawar district of Ghazni province. She was forced into displacement.

(All names in this report have been changed for security reasons.)

According to reports from that year, fighting between Kuchis and locals in the Sabzab Khawat village of Nawar began on the evening of Monday, June 1, and lasted until morning. The conflict was said to be rooted in disputes over pastures and farmland. During the attack, the Kuchis burned down dozens of homes and displaced many families.

Gulnar told Rukhshana Media that two days before the incident, the Kuchis had stormed the village and let their livestock loose in people’s farmlands. This sparked anger, and on the second night it escalated into a large conflict.

She recalls that the Kuchis attacked at midnight, when most were asleep, setting homes and villagers’ fuel stores on fire. She cannot remember every detail, but believes more than twenty homes and everything in them were burned. Dozens of families were left homeless.

“All I remember from that night is the screams of children, the cries of women, and the panic of men. Everyone was running, just trying to save their lives,” she said.

From the home and life she had built with sweat and struggle, nothing remained. All her belongings, even her children’s clothes, turned into smoke and ashes.

They spent the night out in the fields, and at dawn had no choice but to head to Kabul — a city that added new wounds instead of healing the old.

With a trembling, tear-choked voice, she said: “I married off two of my daughters so we wouldn’t starve. I might have to give the third one too, out of desperation.”

In Kabul, Gulnar and her family of ten settled in District 13, in Shahrak-e-Etifaq — a neighborhood steeped in poverty. The only source of income for the family was the carpet weaving done by Gulnar’s daughters.

Her husband, now 61, is too old for hard labor. Before the fall of Kabul, he used to peddle goods on the streets, but after the Taliban returned on August 15, 2021, even that was taken away.

“Every day the Taliban would confiscate his cart and demand fines. They chased street vendors, threw their goods on the roads, and still do the same. At the end of the month, instead of profit, there was loss. Now even that poor man’s work is gone,” Gulnar said.

She is the mother of six daughters, aged 13 to 24, and a 7-year-old son. Her daughters tried to study while also helping the family earn. They had hoped for a brighter future, but after the Taliban’s return, those hopes collapsed one by one under the weight of poverty. Two of them were forced into unwanted marriages, sacrificing their dreams for survival.

Gulnar kept her eyes on the half-woven carpet in front of us as she continued: “They tied knots day and night, sleepless, wanting to save both us and themselves through education. But it never happened.”

At this point she could no longer hold back her tears: “Creditors came knocking every day. I had no choice. Four years ago, I was forced to marry off my eldest daughter for 250,000 afghanis, against her will. The following year, to escape hunger, I gave my second daughter in marriage for 300,000 afghanis.”

Forced and child marriages in Afghanistan have become a worsening human rights crisis, especially since the Taliban’s return in August 2021. Recent reports show the practice is spreading, disproportionately harming girls and young women.

The Afghanistan Human Rights Center reported earlier this year that 66% of forced and underage marriage victims were schoolgirls, and 33% were university students. The report also noted increases in domestic violence, mental health issues, and depression among women and girls after the Taliban’s education bans.

Sudaba, 22, Gulnar’s second daughter, was in grade 12 when the Taliban banned girls from school. She had dreamed of becoming a teacher, but that dream was shattered. In the summer of 2022, despite her wishes, her parents forced her into marriage.

Now Sudaba is the mother of a one-and-a-half-year-old girl and lives in Kabul’s District 7. She still keeps her schoolbooks and practice exam forms as reminders of her lost dreams.

“My dreams were always the priority in my life. I still think of them. But when I visit my parents and see their lives, nothing feels more painful… not even the death of my dreams,” she said with deep sorrow.

Sudaba explained that her constant stress dried up her breast milk, forcing her to use formula for her baby. “I’m afraid my younger sisters will face the same fate as me and my elder sister. My father is very old, and caring for my sick uncle has fallen on us too. The medical costs and daily expenses are crushing us.”

Maryam, 17, the fourth daughter, had to stop her studies in grade 7. She had wanted to be a doctor: “If I became a doctor, I’d treat my uncle first, then myself.”

Still a teenager, she suffers aches like an old woman. Long hours bent over the loom have weakened her bones; sometimes her legs go numb from pain. The dust from the threads makes her cough constantly. For her, carpet weaving is not just daily work — it is the weight that has stolen her health and childhood.

Maryam and her sisters work 11 to 12 hours a day. They finish one carpet in about a month and a half, earning only 8,000 to 9,000 afghanis — not enough even for basic needs.

The farmland where Gulnar once sowed seeds with joy is now occupied by the Kuchis. “It’s been nine years, and I’ve never dared step on that land again. I heard the Kuchis rebuilt our burned homes for themselves,” she said bitterly.

The armed Kuchi raids in Nawar left deep scars. A 2011 Human Rights Commission report documented 782 families displaced by Kuchi attacks, their assets looted, and 20 compounds burned.

Now under Taliban rule, the situation has worsened. Not only in Nawar, but across Hazarajat, locals are being forced from their homes.

Most recently, on July 28, 25 families in the village of Rashk Pushta-Gharghari, Panjab district of Bamiyan, were ordered by Taliban courts to leave their homes in favor of the Kuchis.