An Unfinished Journey: The Forgotten Women of Afghanistan, and the Ones Who Fled to Fight On

By Liz Braun

Rating: B+

The easy way to control a nation is to oppress its women. Erode half the population’s human rights, reproductive rights and education and any chance for progress or positive change is lost forever. Just look at America.

In Afghanistan, this approach to control has been perfected under the Taliban.

When the Taliban resumed control of Afghanistan in 2021, the women of that country had their rights eradicated overnight. The situation has only become worse over the last three years. News in August outlined new restrictive laws from the ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” that ban women’s faces and voices in public. 

Afghan girls protest the closure of their schools in An Unfinished Journey

The documentary An Unfinished Journey — it played here first in the spring at Hot Docs — covers some of this territory and will be released in Canadian theatres starting Wednesday, September 25.

The documentary will be shown nationally on CBC and CBC Gem in October.

This is a must-see proposition for all, but especially for anyone who believes this kind of gender apartheid could never happen here.

From directors Aeyliya Husain and Amie Williams, An Unfinished Journey centres on four women who were leaders in their country and as such had to flee Afghanistan in 2021 when U.S. (and other) troops were withdrawn and the Taliban took over.

The women — journalist Nilofar Moradi and politicians/activists Homaira Ayubi, Zefnoon Safi and Nargis Nehan — now live in Canada, which was one of the first places globally to offer permanent residency; from Canada they can advocate for the women of Afghanistan.

The film outlines who each of the women is, what she did in Afghanistan, what she left behind and what she is working on here in Canada. It is somehow extra-distressing to witness the women telling their stories of unimaginable chaos and loss in Afghanistan — as the camera pans across the blessedly dull and pokey skyline of their new home in Ottawa or Calgary. 

(As to why the women did not stay and fight: they would have been “disappeared” by the Taliban, as was Mural Jan, for example, a hardworking young MP who stayed in Afghanistan and was murdered in her home.)

An Unfinished Journey is sometimes difficult to watch. In a segment shot in Toronto, Homaira Ayubi talks about being one of the people who warned against any sort of peace talks with the Taliban prior to the 2021 situation. A former member of parliament, she is old enough to remember when the Taliban last ruled, 20-odd years ago. As one of the women says about the hand-over of her country, “They told the wolves to come and get the sheep.”

The international community appears to have turned its back on Afghanistan, which is a focus of this documentary. The women express their desperation at the state of their country, at the plight of the women living there and at the ugliness of what the future may hold. 

Women are barred from work and education. Child brides are on the increase. The press is muzzled. People are starving. 

Footage of Senator Marilou McPhedran, Patricia Cooper (founder of Women’s Regional Network) and others working with the Afghan women in An Unfinished Journey adds a note of hope, but the fact remains that women’s rights groups and the international community seem to have turned away from Afghanistan.  

As one woman says, women have issues all over the world, in developed and undeveloped countries; “Women’s rights are never a given.” 

Ignore that at your peril.

An Unfinished Journey: Written by Aeyliya Husain, directed by Aeyliya Husain and Amie Williams, with Nilofar Moradi, Homaira Ayubi, Zefnoon Safi and Nargis Nehan. In theatres starting September 25 and on The Passionate Eye, at 9 p.m. Oct 16 on CBC and CBC Gem.

In select cinemas there will be a Q & A following the screening with some of the women featured in the film: London, Sept 25 - Hyland Cinema; Hamilton, Oct 2 - The Westdale; Ottawa, Oct 5 - Bytowne Cinema; Kitchener, Oct 6 - Apollo Cinema; Vancouver, Oct 12 - the Rio Theatre.

The producers of this film have partnered with the charity For The Refugees, which helps Afghan women continue their education in Canada.