In 2018, Samira Asghari became the first representative from Afghanistan to join the International Olympic Committee. She has ...

First, her education was taken away. Then, a wedding was arranged – against her will – to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa was left facing an unthinkable choice. “I had two options: to marry a ...

She stepped outside her home as she had hundreds of times before. She did not make it to her class. She was standing by the roadside waiting for a taxi when a Taliban vehicle – a US-made Ford Ranger – ...

Note: This story was updated on January 22 to include information from a new UNAMA report. Mursal* made sure to wear a long black hijab while covering her face with a black mask when she left work ...

The Taliban introduced its new Penal Code of the Taliban Courts as a replacement for Afghanistan’s national penal code. Unfortunately, it lacks even the most basic formal and substantive standards of ...

Seven months after the Taliban takeover, I was living with my husband’s family in a three-room apartment located in a remote township in Kabul. The window of my room opened onto the courtyard. That ...

When officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice stopped Kulsum on a street in western Afghanistan, she was not working for a television station or ...

This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian. The Taliban have ordered a sweeping ban on the use of smartphones by government officials – in what some analysts say could foreshadow ...

On the last day of February, Maulana Hamid ul-Haq Haqqani, the leader of the Sami-ul-Haq faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, one of Pakistan’s ultra-conservative political parties, and also the deputy ...

This narrative has been published in partnership with the Guardian. Coffee is my therapy. Every morning, as soon as I get out of bed, the first thing I reach for is a cup of coffee. At the same time, ...

Noria* gathered her books and slipped into the quietest corner of her home, a small room blackened with smoke from the family bread oven. She laid out a worn, red mat, sat down, and turned on her ...

This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian. Parwana* no longer recognises her own children. Once known in her Kandahar village for her beauty, the 36-year-old now sits on the ...