Yesterday, I was watching a documentary about an Afghan girl. She was born in Afghanistan, then crossed borders as a refugee into Pakistan. And as I watched her story unfold, I couldn’t help but think—she and I share the same ethnicity. We look alike. We are so similar. But I was born on this side of the Durand Line, in Pakistan, and she was born on that side, in Afghanistan.
And just like that, a mere accident of birth, a simple stroke of luck, charted entirely different paths for us. Borders were drawn long before either of us existed, yet they determined the course of our lives. I had nothing to do with it. She had nothing to do with it. But still, it defined everything.
As an academic, I have asked myself many times: What is the impact of my work? Am I just writing papers to be filed away in libraries, stacked on shelves, cited maybe a handful of times, and then quietly forgotten? Or am I truly touching lives? Am I reaching those who could have been in my place—if only a border had been drawn differently?
And this brings me to Afghan women. There’s a narrative out there, a tired, recycled one that paints them only as oppressed and voiceless. But that’s not what I see. That’s not what I want to see. Afghan women have agency. They are powerful. They are resilient. Their circumstances are challenging, yes, but their minds are not shackled. Their spirits are not broken. They are rising, innovating, creating—especially in entrepreneurship.
In fact, women entrepreneurship is growing in Afghanistan despite the headlines that would make you believe otherwise. They are setting up businesses, supporting their families, building networks. They are reclaiming spaces, pushing boundaries, refusing to be invisible.
And I want to be part of this story. I want to tell it. Not from the lens of pity or “saving” but from the lens of solidarity, of shared experience, of respect. I want to write with them, not about them. I want to decolonize the knowledge, to strip away the pity narratives and replace them with stories of power, resilience, and agency.
I don’t know how or when, but I hope I find a way. I hope a door opens. I hope I get to sit with them, listen to their stories, and then share them with the world. Not as stories of tragedy, but as stories of triumph.
Because sometimes, the only difference between me and her was a line drawn on a map.
Photo 1 = Summer 1998, in the mountains of Quetta after i finished my undergraduate in Physics and Mathematics.
Photo 2 = Summer 2019 - Attending a Graduation Ceremony at Cardiff University as Professor In Business (with my children). I did my PhD from Cardiff in 2005
hashtag#DecolonizingKnowledge hashtag#AfghanWomenEntrepreneurs hashtag#WimpyAcademic hashtag
And just like that, a mere accident of birth, a simple stroke of luck, charted entirely different paths for us. Borders were drawn long before either of us existed, yet they determined the course of our lives. I had nothing to do with it. She had nothing to do with it. But still, it defined everything.
As an academic, I have asked myself many times: What is the impact of my work? Am I just writing papers to be filed away in libraries, stacked on shelves, cited maybe a handful of times, and then quietly forgotten? Or am I truly touching lives? Am I reaching those who could have been in my place—if only a border had been drawn differently?
And this brings me to Afghan women. There’s a narrative out there, a tired, recycled one that paints them only as oppressed and voiceless. But that’s not what I see. That’s not what I want to see. Afghan women have agency. They are powerful. They are resilient. Their circumstances are challenging, yes, but their minds are not shackled. Their spirits are not broken. They are rising, innovating, creating—especially in entrepreneurship.
In fact, women entrepreneurship is growing in Afghanistan despite the headlines that would make you believe otherwise. They are setting up businesses, supporting their families, building networks. They are reclaiming spaces, pushing boundaries, refusing to be invisible.
And I want to be part of this story. I want to tell it. Not from the lens of pity or “saving” but from the lens of solidarity, of shared experience, of respect. I want to write with them, not about them. I want to decolonize the knowledge, to strip away the pity narratives and replace them with stories of power, resilience, and agency.
I don’t know how or when, but I hope I find a way. I hope a door opens. I hope I get to sit with them, listen to their stories, and then share them with the world. Not as stories of tragedy, but as stories of triumph.
Because sometimes, the only difference between me and her was a line drawn on a map.
Photo 1 = Summer 1998, in the mountains of Quetta after i finished my undergraduate in Physics and Mathematics.
Photo 2 = Summer 2019 - Attending a Graduation Ceremony at Cardiff University as Professor In Business (with my children). I did my PhD from Cardiff in 2005
hashtag#DecolonizingKnowledge hashtag#AfghanWomenEntrepreneurs hashtag#WimpyAcademic hashtag
