But Bakhtari refused to comply. Her decision has earned her the description of Afghanistan’s “last ambassador”.

In an interview with the BBC, Bakhtari recalled spending nearly 24 hours in deep uncertainty after the Taliban returned to power, wondering what she should do next.

“Until the day before, we used to call this group extremists, and now they were running the country,” she said.

She believed the Taliban government would want to remove her from the diplomatic post because she was a woman.

Bakhtari said she also questioned what would happen to the embassy and its sensitive documents if she accepted the Taliban’s demand and left.

Eventually, she decided to remain in office. “I was sent by an elected government to represent my country and the Afghan people abroad. So why should I leave?” she said.

Although the Taliban authorities formally removed her from the position years ago, Bakhtari continues to work as an ambassador in protest. She says she runs Afghanistan’s embassy in Austria according to her own principles and conditions.

In its recent interview, the BBC spoke to her about her life, her journey out of Afghanistan and her decision to remain in the diplomatic post.

When Manizha Bakhtari Had to Leave Afghanistan for Pakistan

Bakhtari was born in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. She said her family lived in an apartment in an area largely inhabited by middle-class families.

Her father was a well-known Afghan poet, writer and intellectual who was familiar with literary and political circles.

Although her mother was not widely known in those circles, Bakhtari described her as part of a generation of Afghan women who had embraced modernity.

“My mother’s clothing was much more modern than that of later generations, and she used to style her hair like Audrey Hepburn,” she said.

Asked how the rise of the Mujahideen changed Afghanistan and affected her family, Bakhtari recalled that her father was imprisoned because of his views.

“I think I was only seven years old at the time. I knew my father was not at home. My mother made up a story that he had gone to buy toys and clothes for us, but we could sense the truth because we saw her crying and her eyes were always red,” she said.

When Taliban forces entered Kabul in the 1990s, her father faced an immediate threat and decided to leave the country.

He wanted to take Bakhtari and her sister with him, but she was already married and had a family of her own, so she remained in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban first seized power in 1996, her husband saw the body of former Afghan president Najibullah hanging in a public square. The incident prompted him to make a major decision.

Bakhtari said that if her father had not left Afghanistan, he might have met the same fate as Najibullah.

Faced with the situation, she eventually decided to leave Afghanistan for Pakistan, like thousands of other people.

During the journey, she was deeply worried about her children. “We had to travel in a minibus with many other people. There were so many of us packed into the small van that it was almost impossible to breathe,” she recalled.

When they reached the border, none of them had passports.

Bakhtari said they had enough money to manage for the first few months in Pakistan. Later, relatives living abroad provided financial support.

Bakhtari’s Return to Kabul and Career at the Foreign Ministry

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent US and British invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban government collapsed.

Like many other Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, Bakhtari decided to return to Afghanistan.

She described the return as “one of the best moments of my life”.

“It felt like a magical experience,” she said. At the time, she was working in education when Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry contacted her.

“I was a lecturer at Kabul University and also working with an NGO when I received a call from the Afghan foreign minister,” she recalled.

According to Bakhtari, the Foreign Ministry was trying to bring young women into its ranks because many women had left the country during the Taliban’s previous rule and were unwilling to return.

She described joining the ministry as a test. “I have no regrets about that decision today, but it was not an easy one for me. I had to leave teaching, my students and my childhood dream,” she said.

The Taliban’s Return to Power

When the Taliban took control of Kabul again in 2021, Bakhtari was serving as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Austria.

She said it was a moment when she had to take a clear moral position and make a difficult decision. “I could not believe what had happened in Afghanistan. Even on the day President Ashraf Ghani left the country, I still thought this could not be happening,” she said.

The collapse of the government created uncertainty for many Afghan diplomats serving abroad. “Until the day before, we used to call this group extremists, and now they were running the country,” she said.

Bakhtari recalled spending 24 hours wondering what to do. “Should I just pack my things and leave, and tell my colleagues to do the same?” she asked herself.

She said Taliban officials later contacted her, saying they wanted to hold a Zoom meeting with all Afghan diplomats. However, she declined to participate.

In 2022, she received a letter from the Taliban government informing her that she had been dismissed from her position.

Bakhtari said she had strong support, while the international community did not recognise the Taliban government as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

She therefore decided to continue working as ambassador in protest. “I felt as though I was now running the embassy according to my own principles and on my own terms, and that I would not surrender to the Taliban,” she said.