A TikToker going by the name Alex Sunny has gone viral after announcing plans to move to Afghanistan to live with a man she met on Snapchat in July 2024 and has only met in person once.
The woman, who is half-Jordanian and half-American, began communicating with her now-husband after the two exchanged WhatsApp numbers following their initial Snapchat connection.
She described their bond in a TikTok video: “We talked for 12 to 15 hours a day, like probably even more than that. So even though we had only been talking for around 5 to 6 months before we met IRL, it felt like I was not meeting a stranger honestly.”
The couple met in person for the first time in December 2024, and after nearly two years of long-distance communication, Alex says she is ready to relocate to Afghanistan because her husband’s US visa was denied. She explained the denial was not due to anything in his background but because of Trump administration policy, which placed Afghanistan on a list of 12 countries whose nationals are fully restricted from entering the United States.
Critics have raised serious concerns about the dangers Alex would face as a woman living under Taliban rule. According to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security’s Women, Peace and Security Index, Afghanistan ranks last out of 181 countries for women’s safety. The country records the lowest rates of women’s employment and financial inclusion globally, the highest rate of maternal mortality, the highest rate of intimate partner violence, and the highest rate of political violence targeting women.
Under Taliban rule, women in Afghanistan are forbidden from leaving their homes without a male escort, speaking in public, attending school past the 6th grade, going to gyms or parks, wearing makeup, wearing perfume, or using social media. Women’s voices are considered potential instruments of vice, and women are not permitted to be heard singing or reading aloud, even inside their own homes.
Alex has stated she plans to take day trips, go to the gym with her husband’s aunt, and spend time with friends she made on TikTok, all activities that are heavily restricted or outright prohibited for women under Taliban law. Her husband’s visa was denied in January 2025.
Alex said in a video recorded well before the story went viral: “I am not going to let somebody like Donald Trump determine the rest of our lives and our future.”
