The Paradox of Testimony

On August 31, 2025, an earthquake devastated the Afghan province of Kunar. Over two thousand dead, thousands injured, entire villages reduced to rubble. Rescuers refused to treat women, due to discriminatory laws imposed by the Taliban regime.

Thanks to our collaboration with the Association "Insieme si può..." and RAWA – the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – together  we sent 10,000 euros for medical assistance, medicines, and logistics. A mobile medical team reached isolated villages, treating women and children who had never had access to care. "Never in our history has a team that included women come here," the inhabitants said.

We have proof of all this. Clear photographs, full names, GPS coordinates. Detailed reports documenting every intervention, every village, every life saved. Material that would make our work transparent, verifiable, unassailable.

And we cannot show anything.

Every document we receive from Afghanistan carries a shadow: that of who wrote it, who took that photo. People who live changing their names every week, who move at night between safe houses, who know they are being hunted. For them, ending up in a public report means ending up on a list. The one the Taliban regime updates daily with names of women to disappear.

The paradox is this: the more documentation we have, the less we can share it. The transparency that should legitimize our work becomes a weapon against those who make it possible.

We live in an era obsessed with immediate verifiability. "Pics or it didn't happen," says the internet with the confidence of those who have never had to hide. But what happens when showing evidence means condemning those who collected it?

Some ask us: why don't you publish the names? Why don't you show the villages? Why don't you give exact coordinates, recognizable faces? The answer is simple and terrible: because those workers must be able to continue working. Because those villages must not become targets. Because those faces must remain anonymous to remain alive.

It's not lack of trust or deliberate opacity. It's survival calculus. Every initial instead of a name is a woman who can return home. Every "northern province" instead of "district X" is a place that remains accessible. Every unpublished photograph is a protected identity.

We're not asking you to take our word for it. We're asking you to understand that some testimonies survive only in shadow. That protecting those who help is part of the help itself. That true accountability is not to social media followers, but to the women who risk everything to do what the State refuses.

The dilemma is this: silence means condemning these women to invisibility, speaking can condemn them to death. Between these extremes, we navigate every day. We say enough to get the necessary funding, to keep attention alive, to prevent Afghanistan from disappearing from the world's radar. We stay silent enough not to turn every post into a target painted on someone's back.

The reports exist. They are detailed, complete, verifiable. They are in our archives, accessible to those who fund the projects. The Association "Insieme si può..." has received them, analyzed them, safeguards them. They comply with all required accountability protocols. But they will never be public. Because some lives are worth more than any like or transparency certification. Because the best proof that an intervention worked is that those who carried it out are still alive to do another.

This is the price of testimony under a regime that punishes those who heal, persecutes those who teach, hunts those who help. A price made of necessary silence, omitted details, half-told stories.

And we pay it gladly. Because the alternative would be to tell everything once, and then have no one left to hear from.