Patience and resistance; a beacon glimmering hope for Afghan widow

“It has been twenty years since Hedayat is gone. He left me alone with five children”, says the 48-year-old Laili. Tall and strong, she is one of the many Afghan women who has lost her husband during Afghan civil war.

In a sunny fall day, Ms. Laili allowed me to talk to her and listen to her painful yet brave story. She is living at a rented house in Barchi, an overpopulated slum area in the western neighborhood of the Afghan capital Kabul. 

Decades of war and conflict have made millions of Afghan families suffer losses. The brutal war has forced tens of thousands of Afghan families to flee the country, left a large number of population with disability and mental health crisis. Laili’s story—similar to stories of tens of thousands Afghan widows who have lost their husbands in war—truly depicts the ugly face of a most often glorified war in Afghanistan.