This story first appeared in Nepali Times

Newsroom in exile exposes the Taliban’s war on women in Afghanistan

The year 2022 has seen a relentless tightening of fundamental rights in Afghanistan, a process that began after the Taliban took over when NATO forces suddenly pulled out in August 2021. The latest was the ban on women getting a higher education.

Behind the scenes, Afghan journalists, especially women reporters and editors both within the country and in exile, have continued with the dangerous work of keeping the world informed about what is happening in their country.

Here is a post from Zan Times on 18 December ‘In the last 48 hours, five women and girls attempted or died by suicide in Nimraz and Ghor provinces, according to hospital registrations. Two teens died in Ghor while three attempts occurred in just one 24-hour period in Nimraz…’

The story was written by Mahsa Elham (a pseudonym) in Zan Times, a volunteer-run newsroom by Afghan journalists in exile. Its editor is Zahra Nader.

I had met Zahra in Kathmandu in 2016 at a media conference co-hosted by the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ) and the Global Investigative Journalism Network in Kathmandu. Since then, Zahra’s life, and indeed the life of most Afghans, especially its women, has turned upside down.

It is difficult to imagine that such human rights violations and atrocities are being committed in this day and age in countries like Afghanistan and Burma. The Taliban and its precursor guerrillas fought off two world superpowers, yet they are so scared of women that they have tried to kill and muzzle them, deprive them of education and confine women to their homes.

Zahra’s message to me on Twitter was an attempt to show that they are continuing their valiant work as journalists, no matter the risk and challenges they face every day to their lives. Zahra wants the content of Zan Times to be spread as widely as possible.

Zahra says: ‘Zan means ‘woman’ and Zan Times is our way of resisting the Taliban, and speaking our truth.’

Indeed, since it was launched in August 2022, Zan Times has produced more than 50 stories, covering human rights violations, especially those affecting women, LGBTQ community and the environment. Zan Times can be followed on Twitter (@ZanTimes), Instagram (zantimes2) and Facebook (Zan Times).

Zan Times works with journalists inside Afghanistan and in exile, and five of the seven journalists working clandestinely within Afghanistan are women. Other journalists like Zahra herself are abroad.

One story from inside Afghanistan earlier this month related how people whose relatives were detained by the Taliban for months have been told that their loved ones are dead.

Fact checking is an important part of journalism, so is the protection of sources. So how does Zan Times do this? Zahra replies by email: ‘We are using what I call community reporting. Our colleagues are mostly reporting on what is happening in their communities. We do not publish news unless two independent sources confirm it. It is very difficult to work as a journalist in Afghanistan as it has been criminalised under the Taliban. However, we do not run stories that we are not sure of its authenticity. We have journalists on the ground as well as our own connections and network in Afghanistan. We use pseudonyms to protect identities.’

Zahra, 32, has lived through four regime coups in Afghanistan in her life time. During the first take over by the Taliban she was just 6 years old. She belongs to the Hazara community, which has been specifically targeted by the Taliban. She and her family were forced to take refuge in Iran, where she was denied the right to education because she was a refugee.

Lack of education as a child created a huge void in Zahra’s life and she had a traumatising childhood. In a voice recording sent to me from Canada, where Zahra is spending her days in exile, she recounted why she felt a need to start Zan Times: ‘Once again my childhood trauma has returned when I see millions of Afghans denied the right to education again, I am now in exile in Canada as I cannot return back to my country.

Zahra’s husband is a Canadian citizen, and she was able to join him with her nine-year-old son. She is enrolled for her PhD in York University in Toronto in Women and Gender Studies. She had dreams of completing her studies and returning to Afghanistan and teaching in a newly-established University on Gender Studies. Her PhD thesis is on women’s’ political history from 1960s -1990 where she is looking into the rights issues of women in politics and activism in Afghanistan.

Zahra is running the Zan Times newsroom from exile with my own savings, both by doing independent journalism and also exposing the ostracisation and victimisation of women by the Taliban.

She says, ‘We women journalists are trying to redefine what news is, and what matters the most. In Afghanistan, newsrooms are run by men I wanted to be able to bring a new perspective in journalism,” she said with passion and determination.’

Zahra was a journalist in Kabul since 2011 and six years ago joined The New York Times bureau in Kabul — the first Afghan woman journalist to work with an international media in Afghanistan.

With the collapse of Afghan government in August 2021 and the takeover by the Taliban,there is now a systematic attempt to erase the Afghan women from social and political life, but particularly from journalism.

In December 2021, just after four months of the Taliban takeover, four in every five women journalists lost their jobs and there are no women journalists at all in 11 out of 34 Afghan provinces.

‘We want to tell stories of Afghan women, especially when Afghanistan is now under a regime that especially sees one gender as its enemy, especially women from certain persecuted ethnicities,’ Zahra says.

Most of Zahra’s colleagues at Zan Times who are outside Afghanistan are working voluntarily, but she is looking for funding to keep things going. ‘We are women in newsrooms, not boardrooms, so we do not have the right connections with funding agencies,’ she says.

The Taliban now has Zan Times in its radar after the BBC Persian Service did a story on the paper. The Taliban are trying to hunt down the reporters on the ground in Afghanistan who are filing stories for Zan Times.

‘We hide the identity of our sources and reporters inside Afghanistan so that no two people in Afghanistan know whom we are working with. None of our reporters are connected with each other in Afghanistan. They are connected with us outside the country, so even if they are caught, which we pray they never are, they don’t know who else is in the team,’ Zahra explained.

Freshta Ghani is an editor with Zan Times and is also a writer who has published two stories in the book My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women. She used to work at Radio Azadi. ‘My family and I left Afghanistan in September 2019 and fled to Tajikistan. I was unemployed for three years,’ Freshta told me over WhatsApp.

Kreshma is another Zan Times news editor and an investigative journalist and is living in exile in Turkey. Zan Times is focused on Afghanistan but its newsroom is spread out across the globe with Zahra Nader in Canada, Freshta Ghani in Tajikistan and Kreshma in Turkey.

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This story first appeared in Zan Times

By Azada Azad

Masouma opened her tailoring workshop in the centre of Nili city just six years ago, investing 70,000 afghanis into the business. She had big dreams.  However, Masouma says all of her efforts have been wasted since the Taliban takeover of the country. These days, she doesn’t go to her workshop very often because of the restrictions imposed on businesswomen in Daikundi.

The latest is a crippling economic blow to businesswomen such as Masouma: women tailors are no longer permitted to handle men’s clothing. “The other day, the Taliban soldiers came to my tailoring workshop and said that women tailors are not allowed to touch men’s clothes because they get sensational and it is a sin,” she tells Zan Times.

Almost three weeks ago, a group of Daikundi businesswomen and craftswomen told Zan Times that the Taliban’s Directorate for Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice ordered them not to interact with male customers or employers. “The Taliban has ordered that seamstresses are not allowed to sew men’s clothes, nor are they allowed to even look at men,” one of the craftswomen told Zan Times. The Taliban also warned them that their businesses would be closed if they did not obey the rules.

Laila, a businesswoman who has worked in the bazaar of Nili city for more than a decade, says that life is increasingly hard. She says she started her business with 500 afghanis and had a successful business. “I trained 35 women on embroidery. My trainees produced all kinds of needlework, embroidery, and handicrafts, and I sold their products in my shop,” she tells Zan Times.

In all, Laila says that she had invested a total of 250,000 afghanis in her business over the years. She says the women of Daikundi had innovated to improve their businesses, including launching a Thursday Bazaar. “Before the Taliban takeover, my colleagues and I were financially independent, but now, business is down and we do not have a good economy,” she says.

It seems to the women business owners that there is no space for them in Nili city. The constant introduction of new restrictions has forced many to give up on their businesses. The head of Daikundi Businesswomen Association tells Zan Times that prior to Taliban takeover there were 48 businesswomen in the association. Now, just nine are active.

One of those businesswomen who is no longer active is Nazia. She set up a cosmetics and hygiene shop four years ago. “The Taliban’s presence creates fear among the people, which causes less sales in the market,” she tells Zan Times. Last month, she closed her business.  “I had to sell my shop and the asset in it for a very low price. I had started my business with 50,000 afghanis and before Taliban came to power, my business was worth 500,000 afghanis.”

The challenges facing Daikundi’s businesswomen aren’t only economic. “In several instances, the Taliban soldiers have arrested my apprentices and humiliated, insulted, and cursed us,” explains Masouma. “In their last attempt to harm us, they have torn off my workshop’s tableau.”

Although the Taliban has not officially banned women’s businesses, the restrictions that they have imposed, such as a ban on trading with male customers or employers, have effectively made it impossible for businesswomen to keep their shops open. And that is impacting the overall economy. Estimates show that imposing restrictions on women’s employment has damaged Afghanistan’s economy at least by US$1 billion.

Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.

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This story first appeared in Zan Times

By Zahra Nader and Zahra Mousawi

A police vehicle stopped in a shopping area in the Chah-Baba neighbourhood of Mazar-e-Sharif on March 3. Five Taliban gunmen got out of the car and dropped two bodies wrapped in black cloth on the road. “Control your women or else this will be their fate,” the commander told bystanders.

Mohammad was an eyewitness. “They dumped the bodies near a shop and threatened people that no one should know about this,” he tells Zan Times in a phone interview. “There were more bodies in the car when it drove off,” he adds. (Like all witnesses interviewed for this article, he spoke under pseudonym because of the danger involved in talking to the media.)

The two bodies left in the street of the capital of northern Balkh province were identified as Fatima and Sharifa, two young women who left their houses a day earlier, according to Pari, a neighbour who attended their funerals. “I knew both girls,” says Pari in a phone interview. “One of them was the daughter of our neighbourhood elder. They both received a call and after that, they went missing. The next day, the Taliban dropped their bodies in the bazaar. One of them was shot in the head once, the other one was shot several times in the face — to the point that she could not be recognized.”

The murders of Fatima and Sharifa follow a disturbing pattern that has been occuring ever since the Taliban returned to power: young women vanishing in Mazar-e-Sharif and then their bodies being discovered, dumped anonymously in the city. The deadly violence aimed at women seems to have its origins in female-led protests in the city against the regime in September 2021.

In this investigative report, Zan Times spoke with survivors as well as witnesses involved in those protests in Mazar-e-Sharif, which appears to be the epicentre of the Taliban’s brutal suppression in the province. They share disturbing accounts of how the Taliban beat, abducted, tortured, imprisoned, and killed women for their roles in peaceful protests — and afterward suppressed information about the women’s fate and threatened their families in an effort to stop more knowing of their repression.

At least two major protests took place in Mazar-e-Sharif in September 2021, according to several people involved. During the first, on September 6, protesters and journalists were beaten and threatened by the Taliban. Mahboba, who coordinated that protest, says that no one was arrested.

However, the peaceful protest that was held three days later, on September 9, was violently broken up by the Taliban, according to survivors and witnesses, who say that close to 80 people were arrested. “All my friends who were holding banners and placards were brutally thrown into a Ranger [pick-up truck] by the Taliban,” says Robaba, who participated in the September 9 protest.

Then, the bodies of some of those involved in the protests began to be found in and around the city. “After that day, corpses were found in every corner, in the sewage, in the ruins, and in the Shadian desert,” Robaba says, explaining that she was following the news closely, especially for names of those involved in the protests. “They had been tortured and shot to death. There was a girl’s decomposed body found in the water in my neighbourhood. She was protesting with us.”

Three of the bodies were those of Robaba’s friends, including Frozan Safi, an activist and economics lecturer. She was among the first publicly confirmed deaths of a woman activist who had taken part in the Mazar-e-Sharif protests. She went missing on October 20. Later, her body was identified in a provincial hospital’s morgue. “We recognized her by her clothes,” Safi’s sister told journalist Zahra Nader (one of the authors of this article), when she was reporting on the death for the Guardian and Rukhshana Media. “Bullets had destroyed her face.”

While reporting on Safi’s death in November 2021, we heard  rumours about more bodies being dropped at Balkh provincial hospital by the Taliban, a claim that was rejected by the hospital officials.

Those at the hospital won’t talk. A civil society activist as well as a former doctor whose relatives are working in the hospital both say that doctors and hospital officials have been threatened by the Taliban and aren’t allowed to officially share information about bodies in the morgue with the media.

“Getting information out is almost impossible because the Taliban control all channels of communication in the country,” says Ahmad, an activist who was a civil society group organizer in Mazar-e-Sharif. He explains that the victim’s families and relatives are also threatened. “I spoke with a family that lost several members. The survivors asked me not to follow up on the issue because they are scared of being killed themselves,” Ahmad says.

Through his personal network with health workers, he claims to have seen a list of 115 women whose bodies were brought to hospitals following the protests from September to November of 2021. “The women were brutally killed, mutilated and amputated,” he says, adding that he collected information in order to report it to human rights organizations. He also shared with Zan Times a list that shows names and information of six victims, including one man.

“The [Taliban] carefully planned everything,” says Robaba, “including how to shut down litigation and documentation about the murders. Some of our friends were killed merely for speaking to the media. There were only two of us doing interviews, but the Taliban killed anyone they suspected.”

Robaba was arrested for her involvement in the September 9 protest. She says she was tortured in prison for 11 days. She was finally released only after her family pledged their real estate as collateral.

“These allegations are extremely concerning and merit careful investigation,” Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, tells Zan Times. “They highlight how difficult it is to gather accurate information about rights violations in an environment where the Taliban have intimidated Afghan journalists, international journalists have little presence outside the capital, and UN human rights monitoring is thin on the ground.”

What happened in Mazar-e-Sharif appears to be part of a pattern of repression by the Taliban, who have banned all unauthorized protests. In January 2022, Human Rights Watch documented their violent crackdown on women protesters in Kabul. Those who still attempt to demonstrate are beaten, pepper sprayed and threatened with weapons.

After a protest in Kabul on January 16, 2022, the Taliban raided the homes of several participants. Among those detained by Taliban intelligence were Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, her three sisters, and another protester, Parwana Ibrahimkhel. Adding to the stress and worry of their families, the Taliban publicly denied even arresting them. In February, the women were released along with another group of women activists whose forced confessions were broadcast by the Interior Ministry.

After the arrests and killings in Mazar-e-Sharif, both Mahboba and Ahmad believe that the Taliban were able to locate and arrest so many demonstrators because they had infiltrated the activists’ WhatsApp groups.

“We couldn’t trust anyone to share information,” says Mahboba. “People were burying the bodies of their loved ones in secret because they were scared for the rest of their family.”

She knows that from personal experience: “When my own brother was arrested by the Taliban, there were three of us working in the media. But we didn’t make it public because we were worried they might kill our brother,” she says. By her count, more than 75 people were arrested for their involvement in the protests, including the son of her neighbour.

That’s roughly the same number of arrests that Ahmad has noted in the months following those September protests in Mazar-e-Sharif.  “We had 57 girls and about 20 boys who were tortured and some girls who reported they had been raped,” he says, “They received electric shocks, were insulted, and made to humiliate each other and beaten with water pipes until they were unconscious.”

Ibrahim was one of the protest organizers on September 9, 2021. He spent 10 days in the custody of the Taliban for his role in those peaceful demonstrations. “Our hands were tied with handkerchiefs. My cell phone was taken. They tied my legs, hands, and arms and took me into a room. My back was bent. They lifted me off the ground. Without asking anything, they shocked me with an electric shock,” he explains. “After hours of torture, we were left alone for 36 hours [without food and water].”

Mohammad recounts how his captors forced the prisoners to attack each other, saying, “The Taliban brought a prisoner and gave me the cable to torture him. You wonder how I could do such a thing, but if I didn’t beat him, they would beat me instead.”

Robaba saw toddlers in the prison while she was being detained. “I remember that there were children with us in the prison, including the three-year-old daughter of one of my friends and the five-year-old child of another woman. To torture women, the Taliban slapped the children and put guns on their heads,” she recounts. “They would come at two in the morning and take women for interrogation. Every night, three or four Talibs with rifles on their shoulders [would] force us to speak against ourselves and give forced confessions at gunpoint.”

Though activists including Ahmad and Mahboba are attempting to keep track of the fates of the protesters, the exact number of those detained, tortured or killed is unlikely to ever be fully known — or at least, as long as the Taliban continues to suppress information and intimidate those who try and share it.

“They snuffed out our protest at its inception,” says Mahboba. “No one had the chance to record a video or take a picture.”

All names have been changed to protect the identity of interviewees. 

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This story first appeared in Zan Times

By Freshta Ghani and Soha Azizi

Until nine months ago, Nisa Rahimi* had what she calls a normal life, including a career in a private company. But after the Taliban took over Afghanistan and began imposing restrictions on women and girls, the 23-year-old felt she had no choice but to go out to the streets.  Nisa joined a group of women protesters through social media, and then, she participated in her first ever demonstration, shouting the now-famous motto “Work, Food, Freedom” (for her security, she did not share the exact date of the demonstration).

For Nisa, that first protest ended with her under arrest. “When our demonstration began from the roundabouts of Emergency’s hospital in Kabul, Taliban soldiers started shooting in the air,” Nisa tells Zan Times. “The whole crowd dispersed. Only four of us remained. It was me, two Hazara girls, and one Pashtun girl. All of us were arrested.”

Nisa believes her lack of experience at such protests hindered any chance of escape. The women were taken to the Ministry of Interior Affairs where their phones were taken away. “There was a woman who treated us violently. She slapped me hard and asked me who our leader was and how we were funded,” recounts Nisa to Zan Times.

Nisa and other arrested women repeatedly told Taliban interrogators that they had not received money from anyone. During Nisa’s detainment, the Taliban called her father and employer, asking them who and which countries were supporting Nisa. Finally, they told Nisa’s father to pick her up. The Taliban asked him to bring a community elder (county counsellor) who also acted as a guarantor, adding to the pressure on Nisa’s family that she not cross the Taliban again.

“Only after erasing the photos and documents from my phone, and forcing me to sign a statement, and having the county counsellor to bail me out, did the Taliban release me,” says Nisa. Since then, Nisa’s family has forbidden her to participate in any demonstration.

Nevertheless, Nisa has managed to join a number of other demonstrations, with the help of her mother, “In our family, only my mother knows that I participate in demonstrations,” she says. “Every time I go to demonstrations, my mother tells my father and other members of the family that she has sent me somewhere. We are women and we suffer the same pain. That is why my mother understands me.”

Nisa is one of many women arrested, detained or beaten by the Taliban for taking part in a peaceful protest. In a report published on October 20, 2022, Human Rights Watch detailed how the Taliban group has violently suppressed women’s protests in an effort to silence the widespread women’s protest movement in Afghanistan. An investigative report published on October 9, 2022 by Zan Times also shows how the Taliban has systematically arrested, tortured, and even killed women protesters.

In a recent case, the Taliban arrested Zarifa Yaqoubi, a women’s rights activist, along with four of her male colleagues during a news conference on November 3, 2022. Since then, no news of their fate has been made public.

In addition to the fear of how women protesters will be treated by the Taliban, women have to face their families, too. Six women protesters interviewed by Zan Times say that their families have prevented them from participating in demonstrations. Some say their relations have imprisoned them at home.

“For two weeks I have been imprisoned in my house and cannot participate in any demonstration because my family won’t allow me,” Farzana* tells Zan Times in a phone interview. Until her family stopped her, Farzana, a law and political science student at a private university in Kabul, had participated in recent demonstrations.

Farzana’s family imprisoned her at home after she narrowly avoided being arrested after she and her friends participated in a demonstration against the Hazara genocide in Afghanistan. “A bunch of Taliban soldiers were following me in the streets. I was scared they would find out where I lived, so I went to a relative’s house that night and went home the next morning,” says Farzana.

“After I went to my own house, the Taliban had searched the house that hosted me that night and asked for me: ‘Where is that indecent girl? We have her arrest warrant.’” The house owner denied any relationship with Farzana, but after the Taliban had left, he called Farzana’s father and complained that she had caused trouble for them.

After her father hung up the phone, he beat Farzana. “My father said that I was grounded and can never leave the house again. I am still imprisoned at home,” she says. However, she continues participating in protests via social media through the internet packages that her friends activate for her.

Homaira*, 42, holds a master’s degree in economics. She had been working at the finance department of a government organization until August of 2021, when the Taliban ordered the mother of three to go home. After two months of being excluded from work, she decided to protest for her rights in the streets. “I wasn’t feeling well at all. I wept every day. I had lost my job. I wasn’t the independent woman who earned her own wages and provided whatever she wanted for herself and her children. It felt humiliating to ask my husband for 50 afghanis,” Homaira says to Zan Times. “I found out that women were forming a huge protest movement. I joined them.”

“The hatred we had in our heart towards Taliban’s actions gave us the drive for demonstrations. Having worked and lived as an independent woman for a decade and a half, I couldn’t convince myself to accept the restrictions and limitations imposed by the Taliban,” she explains.

Like Nisa, Homaira was arrested at a demonstration. Homaira’s husband bailed her out of the prison, pledging to the Taliban that she would not participate in any future demonstration. Once released, Homaira says that she couldn’t stand staying home and she felt the urge to continue her protests, but her husband wouldn’t let her. “My husband threatened to divorce me and take my children away from me if I went to the demonstrations,” recalls Homaira.

“My husband has an eye on me constantly,” she adds. “This is why I have not been able to participate in any demonstrations recently. I cannot leave my children to my husband in these difficult times.”

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees. 

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This story first appeared in Zan Times

By Sana Atif

Shazia* is seven years old, the age when Afghan children start school. But an education isn’t an option for Shazia, who lives in Kandahar city, the spiritual home of the Taliban. A month ago, her father forced her to marry a 22-year-old member of the Taliban, a relative tells Zan Times.

“One day after the wedding, Shazia was whimpering and wanted to go back to her father’s house, but her in-laws did not allow her,” says the relation. The mullah imam who performed the wedding of this child says, “This marriage was done with the consent of the agents of both parties.”

Shazia is not the only child to be forced into a marriage with a Taliban member by her father. Another girl in Kandahar city, Mina*, is set to wed a Taliban commander who is 37 years her senior. She is just eight.

“Mina’s authority is in the hands of her father, and he engaged Mina to a Taliban official for 15 lakh afghanis (US$13,000)” explains one of Mina’s relatives to Zan Times. This source, who asked that his name not be used, says that Mina still hopes that her family will not force her to go through with the marriage, though this relation says there is nothing that he can do because he is afraid of Mina’s fiancé. Still, he has tried to change her father’s mind. “I asked her father not to play with his daughter’s fate, but he said, ‘It is not your business. I have my daughter’s authority,’” the relation explains.

These forced marriages occur even though the Taliban issued a decree in December 2021 that stated “women are not property, but free and real human” and “no one can force women to marry by coercion or pressure.” The edict was attributed to Mullah Hibatullah, the Taliban’s supreme leader. Eight months later, Amnesty International reported that “the rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are surging under Taliban rule” and that two causes are “families forcing women and girls to marry Taliban members; and Taliban members forcing women and girls to marry them.”

Women and daughters of members of the previous government’s security forces are also at high risk of forced marriages to Taliban members. In August, Elaha Delawarezi, a third-year student at Kabul Medical University and the daughter of a former officer of the NDSA (National Directorate Security of Afghanistan), released a series of videos in which she recounted her rape, torture, and forced marriage to a former Taliban spokesperson. After her story went viral, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, “It would be no surprise for a Taliban official to feel free to inflict forced marriage, rape, assault, nonconsensual filming, and blackmail. The question is how many such cases go unheard.” Using the hashtag, #JusticeForElaha,” HRW also stated that a journalist had “corroborated facts about Elaha’s case and said Taliban officials have similarly targeted female relatives of other former government officials with violence to punish their male family members.”

In August, another daughter of a member of the former government security services was also forced to marry a Talib. Her name is Laila, and she is just 13 years old. “Her father was killed by the Taliban two years ago. His mother earns her living by selling dairy products,” a neighbour recounts to Zan Times. “One day, when they went to the bazaar, they were arrested by the Taliban.”

The neighbour learned of their arrest when Laila’s 10-year-old sister asked for help. “Laila’s younger sister came to us because she was worried about her mother and sister. We searched everywhere but did not find them. For two days, the neighbors brought bread and food to this girl so that she would not be hungry. After two days, her mother was released,” explains the neighbour. Her account of what happened to her daughter shows just how vulnerable females are in today’s Afghanistan.

“Laila’s mother was screaming and crying that the Taliban arrested them because her husband was a former military member,” says the neighbour. “The Taliban said that they did not have a mahram,” or a close male relative whom the Taliban says must accompany women when they leave their homes.

Laila’s mother was told by the Taliban member that she and her daughter would cause “moral corruption” in society and that Laila had to marry a Taliban member. Laila is reportedly his third wife.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.

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This story first appeared in Zan Times

By Freshta Ghani

Ahead of this year’s World Television Day on November 21, Nai Supporting Open Media, a media advocacy group in Afghanistan, reveals that more than 100 television networks have stopped operating in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021.

One of the latest to shut down is Kabul News television network, which stopped operating just a few weeks ago. This organization began in 2011 and mainly covered news and political affairs.

Mansoor Nikmal, the news editor of Kabul News, tells Zan Times that the operation has temporarily stopped due to limitations and financial problems.

Although Nikmal does not explain what these “limitations” are, another employee of Kabul News who requested to remain anonymous due to security reasons, tells Zan Times that the main reason for the closure of Kabul News was the Taliban’s direct interference with its programs. This source adds, “Although we had financial problems, it wasn’t so bad that would make us stop our activities. We were going to air some reports that the Taliban wouldn’t allow us. One or two of these reports were about the secret deals of the Taliban on the Durand Line and arms trafficking.”

This source says that they were under pressure from the Taliban because of their work. “The Taliban would call us after airing every newscast and ask us why we had aired the news before they approved it,” explains an employee of Kabul News.

According to this source, the Taliban strictly censors news about women’s protests. “When we broadcast footage of female students protesting in Badakhshan province a while ago, several Taliban agencies contacted us and warned us that we were not permitted to broadcast anything like that,” says this person.

It is due to such interference by the Taliban that many media outlets have ceased their activities in Afghanistan. Zarif Karimi, the head of Nai, tells Zan Times that only 89 television stations are active, compared to 198 that were working before the Taliban takeover.

That’s a sharp plunge in numbers, but still a far cry from the one network that was on the air when the previous Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. Since then, the media industry has flourished, in part due to support from the international community.

As well as the number of stations being cut by more than half, Karimi notes that the restrictions imposed on media by the Taliban have drastically affected the quality of television programs. He says that there isn’t diversity in the programs produced by television networks in Afghanistan, in part because all media are compelled to make sure their programs are in line with Taliban policies.

So far, the Taliban has issued two directives for television networks in Afghanistan. In their first, issued in November 2021, women were banned from appearing in dramas or satire programs, and female newscasters were ordered to observe Islamic hijab. As well, the networks were ordered not to broadcast domestic or foreign shows deemed by the Taliban to not be in line with the culture of Afghanistan or if they would spread “immorality” in the society.

This directive also banned drama series that the Taliban believed were against Islamic sharia or that insulted religious practices.

In May 2022, the Taliban issued a second directive, which required women broadcasters to cover their faces so that only their eyes could be seen while they were on air. As well, they were forbidden from interviewing male guests on a TV programs.

Following that second directive, many women broadcasters left their jobs. On October 1, Lima Espisilai, who worked at One TV, wrote on her Facebook page that she’d finished her last day at that job. “The main reason I left my job was the increasing restrictions that the Taliban imposed on us,” Espisilai says in an interview with Zan Times. “I couldn’t stand it anymore to be humiliated or accept new restrictions every day just because of being a woman. Although I have no escape from Afghanistan, I had to leave my job.”

Nevertheless, many female broadcasters and journalists have continued to work despite the increasing number of restrictions. Hosai Ahmadzai, a broadcaster of Shamshad TV, tells Zan Times that the most difficult part of her job is hosting a one-hour program with her mask on. “I cannot breathe properly during the program with a mask on my mouth, but I am not allowed to remove it,” she explains. “It makes it difficult to communicate with the guest when I cannot breathe. This really upsets me.”

Now after a year and half of Taliban rule, in most recent response to the Taliban’s repression of media, the World Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) announced that Afghanistan’s membership in the coalition has been cancelled.

“Since seizing power, the Taliban have imposed serious restrictions on media freedom that have threatened the safety and well-being of journalists and media workers,” it explained. “It is clear to the MFC that the situation of media freedom in Afghanistan is, unfortunately, no longer in line with the Global Pledge. Indeed, the current state of affairs is one of grave concern,” stated the coalition on Friday, November 18.

Afghanistan became a member of the World Coalition for Media Freedom in 2020. The member countries in this coalition pledged to fulfill global obligations in the field of freedom of expression.

Freedom of speech and media activities have faced serious restrictions after the Taliban came to power. In more than a year since seizing power, the Taliban has subjected journalists and media workers to violence, threats, and arrests. The World Coalition for Media Freedom has emphasized that the harassment, attacks, arrests of journalists, and expulsion of women from the media have caused the independence of the media to be violated.

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By Mahtab Safi

Shagoufa* is a 10-year-old child who carries adult responsibilities on her small shoulders. She works with her father and two younger brothers in one of the clay kilns. Even her youngest brother, 5-year-old, makes bricks. Though they are residents of the Sayad district of Sar-e Pul province, they spend nine months a year working in the clay kilns in Sheberghan city of Jawzjan province. Each day, while Shagoufa, her father and brothers work at the kilns, her mother cooks and does other household chores.

The work of Shagoufa and her family starts before sunrise and ends after sunset. The first thing Shagoufa does is collect the dried bricks that they produced the day before, so her father can sort them for the kiln. While her father manages the kiln, Shagoufa and her two brothers mold new bricks from the clay that has been prepared by their father. This family produces an average of 500 clay bricks a day, which earns them 250 afghanis.

In the last days of autumn, the bitter cold makes it difficult to be outdoors, but the family still works outside producing bricks. “The weather is so cold that when I pour the clay into the molds, my hands freeze,” Shagoufa says in an interview with Zan Times.

For nine months each year, they live in a one-room home that Shagoufa’s father built with the bricks that they have produced. This hut does not have a window or a door, so they endure scorching heat in the summer and severe cold in the autumn, which often makes them sick. There is no doctor or hospital near this clay oven. “We are used to diseases. If one of us gets sick, we wait, and after a few days she or he will recover again. If the illness lasts longer or worsens, we will have to go to the city,” explains Mirwais*, Shagoufa’s father

In late December, Shagoufa and her family return to their home in Sar-e Pul. After three winter months, they return to the furnaces of Jawzjan in the spring.

Shagoufa’s cheeks are red with happiness; she is happy to return to her home province where she has time to learn to read at the informal mosque school. Shagoufa wants to go to school but her dream faces two big obstacles: extreme poverty and the ban on education for girls beyond grade 6. Still she dreams, “I would really like to go to school and study every day, instead of working.”

Shagoufa and her siblings are three of the more than 2,000 children who endure forced labour in Jawzjan, according to data from Save the Children. Children are the majority of the brick-making workforce in Afghan kilns, an International Labour Organization (ILO) study states, explaining how dangerous it is for children: “Work in brick kilns is painfully exhausting and the hours are long as they extend 10 to 15 hours a day. The working environment is extremely unhealthy as these children work typically with no shelter and in direct exposure to the sun and dust. Younger children help with clearing the fields of rubble, arranging the dried-out bricks in stacks, fetching water to make clay, and bringing sand to lay under the bricks.”

More and more children are being forced into work. In a report published in February 2022, Save the Children said that incomes had plummeted so far in the past six months that 18 percent of families had no choice but to send their children into the labour market. Save the Children estimated that if just one child in each family is working, that would add one million children to an overall number that is thought to already be well more than two million. In a 2019 report, the International Labour Organization found that more than half of all children surveyed were engaged in labour, with nine percent being exposed to hazardous work, including carpet-making, mining and working in brick kilns.

Now the clay ovens in Sheberghan have become the home of many working children in this province. Nematullah*, 13 years old, is another child who works with his family of eight in a brick kiln near Sheberghan. Like Shagoufa’s family, his family travels from Sar-e Pul to Jawzjan to work in a clay kiln.

Nematullah, the eldest child, has to bear most of the burden of the work as his father is sick and his mother is so busy dealing with her husband and young children that she can only occasionally help by picking up bricks. So it falls to Nematullah to prepare both the mud and the  clay. If his little brothers and sisters get tired and rest, even for a few moments, Nematullah has to work non-stop until evening to finish their family’s work. “My back and legs hurt from working too much,” he says.

Nematullah wishes to become a doctor and treat poor patients like his father for free. “The first time I dreamed of becoming a doctor was when we transferred one of the sick workers from the furnace to the hospital. His condition was very bad, but the doctors helped him,” he recounts. But poverty does not allow him to study:

Mohammad*, Nematullah’s father, says that he does not know exactly what disease he is suffering from because he doesn’t even have money to go to the doctor. Nematullah’s mother, Bibi Gul, has a deep wound on her right hand. She attempts to treat it by applying an eye ointment that she bought two months ago to treat her eyes. Bibi Gul was herself a child worker. “I have made bricks here since I was young, got married and had children, and now my children are also forced to do the same work,” she says. “The fate of poor people will never change.”

Since the Taliban regained power, poverty and hunger have intensified and families have been forced to send their children to work instead of going to school. The economic situation has worsened since the Save the Children report was published in February, meaning that even more families have no choice but to have their children scrounge for whatever work they can find.

On December 1, a new Gallup poll showed that almost the entire population of Afghanistan (98 percent of those surveyed) say they are “suffering,” while only two percent say they are “struggling.” No one chose the third option, “thriving,” in the results published by the respected international polling firm. The poll found that nine out of 10 Afghan are finding it “difficult or very difficult” to make ends meet, with more than 90 percent rating the situation as “bad” for finding jobs. The survey also notes that “the percentage who say it is a bad time to find a job in their communities soared to a record 92% in 2022.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees. 

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By Sana Atef

Sharifa, 8, sits in front of the World Food Programme’s office in Kandahar every day, waiting for the UN agency to distribute food. When it begins, she moves forward, but not to place an official handout in her white sack. Sharifa is there to collect the grains of wheat, rice, peas, and beans that fall out the sacks of other people. I approach her and start a conversation, asking her what she is doing there alone.

“People in here get flour, rice, peas, and other food items as aid every day,” she says in a slow gentle voice. “Sometimes the sacks have holes in them and grains fall off them. I collect these grains and take them home for my mother to make food for us.”

Besides collecting grain from the WFP office line-up, Sharifa also begs for money to buy bread for her family. Some days she can only get 30 afghanis, enough to buy three loaves of bread (each around 450 grams).

Sharifa, her three sisters, and their mother live in a one-room house with no kitchen or bathroom. It looks more like a ruin. Her mother, Amina, says their misery began two years ago when her husband, an army soldier, was killed. She recalls, “When my husband was alive, I lived like a queen. My husband had a good salary. We lived in a rental house, but that house had all the facilities.”

Amina says she didn’t have anywhere to go after her husband died. A friend of her husband’s had temporarily loaned her this house. Looking at Sharifa sorrowfully, Amina says, “My child leaves the house at 7:00 in the morning and comes back at 5:00 in the afternoon. In between, she begs for food to feed us. I am really worried about her security. The fact that she cannot go to school really bothers me.”

Amina does laundry to earn money for the family. “I get 20 to 30 afghani for washing people’s clothes. I visit different houses every day. It makes me very tired. My back and legs ache. No matter how much I work, I can never make ends meet,” says Amina.

She says she has visited the WFP office in Kandahar several times, asking for assistance. “The managers of this organization keep telling me that I am not on their list, therefore, I cannot receive aid. I asked them to put my name on the list, but they responded that the lists had been prepared beforehand,” says Amina. When Amina realized she wouldn’t receive anything from the WFP, she noticed the grains of wheat, rice, and beans that had fallen on the ground. “That day, I told my daughter to go and collect those grains so I can cook them for the family.”

Zan Times has reached out to WFP for comment, but they did not respond.

Amina and Sharifa aren’t alone. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, the country’s social and economic situation has worsened to the point that poverty and hunger are threats to 95 percent of Afghanistan’s population, the United Nations reported in March. The widowed and single-parent women suffer the most, because not only do poverty and hunger always hit them hard, but the Taliban’s restrictive policies, such as limitation on the movement of women without a male chaperone, makes it even more intolerable.

Lema is struggling to keep her family together. The mother of three has to work and provide for her family because her husband is paralyzed and needs treatment. Fully covered in a burqa, Lema sells vegetables in the market in Kandahar city. She says she has borrowed the money from one of her relatives in order to start that business. “I go to work at dawn and come back at dark, but I cannot earn more than 50 afghanis,” she tells Zan Times. “I am always worried about how to feed my children.”

Recently, her financial situation has gotten desperate. “I have to pay 2,500 afghani per month for house rent. I also have to pay for treatment of my husband, but the money that I earn barely suffices for buying food,” she explains to Zan Times. She hasn’t paid rent for the last four months nor has her husband received medical treatments.  “The landlord has warned me several times to either pay the rent or vacate the house. Now, whenever the landlord comes, we do not open the door so that he thinks we are not home. In a situation like this, where can I go and what can I do?” says Lema.  To help, her seven-year-old son collects burnable garbage from the streets so that they can use it as fuel when cooking.

Lema says no humanitarian organization has helped her or her family. “We are in desperate need of food, but we haven’t received any aid. Why isn’t there anyone to hear us and take our hand?” says Lema.

Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.

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By Freshta Ghani

Everything was fine until 10 minutes before 9 p.m on Tuesday, December 20. Shabana* and her mother were having tea at home when Ahmad, Shabana’s older brother, returned from prayers at the mosque with a troubled face, obviously trying to hold back his anger. As their mother asks what happened, Ahmad turns to Shabana and says, “They said in the mosque that the Taliban has decreed that female students will not be able to study after this and the gates of universities will be closed to them.”

Shabana can’t believe her brother’s words. With hands that are shaking with fear, she takes their mother’s phone and tunes into a local radio station. “This news is a lie, I’m sure,” she thinks to herself.

The first item read by the radio announcer at 9 p.m. is the new edict from the Taliban prohibiting education of female university students until further notice. Her eyes tear up. She knows what “until further notice” means. Just as schoolgirls have waited for more than 450 days for a “further notice” that never comes, now female university students will wait “until further notice,” knowing the gates are never going to be reopened to them.

Shabana is so angry that she cannot sleep. “My whole body was burning with grief,” she recounts to Zan Times in an interview. “I do not understand what to do. I would just walk around the room or hold my head and cry.”

Shabana, 23, and her family live in a village in Samangan province where there is no water or electricity. She spent the last four years studying every night under the light of candles and sometimes mobile phones. She was hopeful about the future and thought that she would be able to alleviate her family’s problems after graduating university and finding a job.

Her father died when Shabana was still in the third grade. Her mother worked in people’s houses doing laundry in order to pay family expenses and send her children to school and university. Some days, she had to take Shabana so that they could complete the work together. “My hands were freezing from washing clothest, but we tolerated everything in order to pay for household expenses and our education,” Shabana says.

Shabana did not even have money for transportation and walked to the university, which was more than two kilometers away from their house. Often she went hungry all day because she did not have money to buy food while at the university. “My friends bought themselves lunch but I told them that I ate food at home. When I was walking home, my legs were weak from hunger,” she explains.

Shabana says that the university had given her hope for a better future: “I was very happy. I planned to get a good job as soon as I graduated from university. I would change my family’s situation and after that I will study for a master’s degree.”

Despite all the difficulties, Shabana had only had two final exams remaining, which she was supposed to take this week. Then she’d have completed her four-year degree. But the Taliban edict reduced all those years of nightly efforts to zero.

Even though Shabana went to the university on Wednesday, December 21, for her exams, the Taliban refused her entry. “We told the Taliban, ‘Just let us pass these two exams, then make us stay at home again,’” she explains. “They said, ‘Go away. You are not allowed to be inside the university even for a moment.’ At that moment, I thought that I would suddenly fall from the last stairs.”

Now she cries as she looks at her books and notes, saying that she does not know what to do.

Shabana’s situation is one being faced by female university students across Afghanistan. Since the Taliban announced their decree on Tuesday, December 20, many female students have suffered mental anguish.

Sadaf* is a 24-year-old student in her final semester of journalism at Jawzjan University. She was only three exams away from graduation and handing in her monograph. Like Shabana, she also went to university on Wednesday in an attempt to finish her exams and receive her bachelor’s degree. But officials refused to allow her to enter the university. “The Taliban sent all the girls outside the gates of the university and said that this is the decree of the Emirate and no girl should enter the university,” she explains.

It was a struggle for Sadaf, who is also a mother, to attend university for four years. “Despite my sleepless nights and my daughter’s restlessness, I studied and made it this far with great efforts, but now everything is multiplied by zero,” she says.

Sadaf says she had come to terms with all of the Taliban’s restrictions, even wearing the mandatory hijab, and was determined to get her bachelor’s degree and start a career as a journalist. “I didn’t think that universities would be closed to girls. I was always worried about where I would work after finishing university and whether the Taliban would allow me to work in the media,” she says.

Now, Sadaj and Shabana and every female university student in Afghanistan are facing futures without education, futures without degrees or possibly even futures without careers. Yet again, the Taliban appear determined to close every avenue by which women can take part in society.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees. 

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