“Yes, yes, yes.

Good, good.

O.K.”

“Yes.”

This is Farahnaz Forotan.

“She’s writing.

And then, she’s talking, O.K.?”

A young Afghan journalist living in Kabul.

“Yes.”

“Yes, yes.

This is beautiful.

This is beautiful.”

I meet her while she’s directing a campaign called

The Red Line.

She’s pushing women to take a stand,

and declare what they refuse to sacrifice

if the Taliban regains power —

before it’s too late.

“I was curious what your personal fears are.”

I follow Farahnaz from neighborhood to neighborhood

as she meets women in their homes or offices,

any place they’re willing to talk.

“Light’s not O.K.”

A young woman directing a team of men.

Farahnaz isn’t exactly the traditional Afghan woman,

but she’s not a total exception either.

When the Americans ousted the Taliban in 2001,

they triggered a revolution for the country’s women.

“O.K., guys.

Good morning, class.”

“Good morning, teacher.”

Girls went to school for the first time in years.

“What do you want to study after English? At university?”

“I want to do journalism.”

“A journalist?”

“Yes.”

“Really?

Oh, we should talk.”

Since then, millions of women have

pursued careers, broken taboos

and emerged as a visible force in public life.

But all of the progress could be reversed.

Now, the Americans are negotiating

to leave the country altogether, and bring

the Taliban back into the government.

At risk?

All the hard-won rights women have gained

over the last 18 years.

So I’m here to ask women

if they trust that a deal for peace won’t cost them

their freedom.

This is Shamila.

She’s intimately familiar with the ways of the Taliban,

because she’s married to one of its members.

He beat her regularly, until she left him.

Now, she’s a police officer in Kabul.

I want to know what she would do if the Taliban returns

to power.

“Shamila, do you have thoughts of leaving the country?”

At work, Shamila regularly handles domestic violence cases.

It’s a reminder that this country, despite its changes,

remains deeply patriarchal.

She’s flooded with calls for help

from women who are being beaten and abused.

The majority of women here are already

treated like second-class citizens.

In the current negotiations, the Taliban is promising

to protect their rights,

but it’s hard to see how, unless their views on women

have transformed.

I visit Maulvi Qalamuddin, once one of the most feared men

in the country.

In the ’90s, he headed the Taliban’s religious police.

They were responsible for things

like flogging women if their burqas were not long enough

to cover their ankles, and seizing and destroying

people’s televisions.

In some ways, he’s changed with the times.

But when it comes to women, he refuses

to acknowledge how the Taliban abused them

in the first place.

“What was the punishment for a woman going out

in public without the hijab?”

“So you believe that life for women, under the Taliban,

in the ’90s was just?”

He’s saying that he respects women’s rights,

as defined by his version of Islam, which

is precisely why it’s hard to trust the Taliban when they

promise to protect women.

Take Zainab Fayez.

She was the only female prosecutor in Kandahar

until a few weeks ago, when the Taliban sent her

a death threat wrapped around a bullet.

She fled.

I meet her in Kabul on her way to the attorney general

to plead for protection so that she can keep working.

Later, we sit down at her relative’s house,

where she’s taking refuge.

“What do you think when you see the Taliban negotiating

right now to be part of the government again?”

But when I press her on whether she

plans to go back to work —

“Do you think you’ll return to Kandahar?”

— she ends the interview abruptly.

“She’s not feeling well.”

“Yeah.

O.K. Yeah.”

It is something I see again and again.

Even with the Taliban out of the government,

some of the most courageous women in the country

are afraid to share their full stories.

And they have good reason.

The truth may cost them their lives.

But for other women in Afghanistan,

the fight for their rights takes a backseat

to their struggle for survival.

I traveled to the conservative south near Kandahar,

where everyday life is disrupted

by constant fighting.

Payendu is living in this makeshift camp

with her three children.

She told me a coalition airstrike destroyed her home

after the Taliban forcefully took refuge there.

The attack killed her husband

and at least four other family members.

Women’s rights are a faraway abstraction here.

Would you be willing to live under the Taliban again,

if it meant peace for your family?

What Payendu and others like her want

is security, money and more than anything, peace,

from whoever can provide it.