Afghan artist leans hard into the banned creative arts to survive the Taliban’s harsh restrictions
Mursal Badakhsh finds solace in strumming her guitar. As the soothing sounds fill her room, she escapes the difficulties of...
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The necessity of creating a global network for Afghan women’s rights
The struggle for women's rights is profoundly urgent in Afghanistan. Being a woman is a clear basis for outright discrimination...
Journalists banned from interviewing women in Helmand, two weeks after photo and video reports were banned in the province
Helmand province's Department of Information and Culture has told a journalist he can no longer interview women.
The girls and women being married off to avoid forced marriage with a Talib
The text message read “I like you and I want to marry you.” Yasra* received it one night from one...
I put my children up for auction just as my father sold me when I was 10: The cycles of lack and abuse keeping families in poverty
In the early hours of the morning in southern Ghazni city, many women who live in poverty leave their homes...
Helmand districts still paying high price for the US-led war as lack of reconstruction bites
Residents in one of the most remote and deprived districts of Helmand during the 20 years of the US-led war...
The Taliban’s public displays of brutality and dead people is deliberate – and psychologically destructive
The Al-Mahdi township in the west of Herat city was silent. Some panicked. Taliban forces had hung the bloodied bodies...
Firsthand account of the extreme violence plaguing women prisons in Balkh
A pregnant woman, who had protested in Balkh province for women’s rights, suffered such a beating from Taliban guards that...
“You betrayed us more than a soldier”: Being a journalist in Afghanistan and the state of the media on National Journalist Day
Not only is war fought with weapons, it’s also a battle of information. Such was the sentiment behind one Taliban...
Herati 13-year-old forced into marriage to help her family survive
a used to stand at the gate of her house and watch school students passing by. She heard the groups...
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