Yet when Western forces pulled out in August 2021, Afghanistan’s women judges, including their families, were suddenly exposed to life-threatening peril. In August 2021, as Kabul was falling, I learned that hundreds of Afghan women judges had suddenly become some of the most wanted people in the country. They enforced the Elimination of Violence Against Women law, prosecuted honor killings, forced marriages and domestic abuse, and held powerful individuals accountable. For many Afghan women, walking into a courtroom and seeing a female judge for the first time was transformative. The Afghan women judges weren’t targeted simply because they were women.