Zan Times

In Afghanistan, guilt is never distributed randomly. For its own survival, the ruling structure requires a permanent site of sacrifice, somewhere onto which fear, failure, frustration, moral crisis, and even political collapse can be offloaded.

This essay is an attempt to understand that logic within the Afghan context, a place where women are deprived not only of rights, but of the very possibility of being innocent.

What Afghan women are experiencing today is not merely a set of restrictions or discriminatory laws but the product of a structure that systematically feminizes guilt.
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This code, which has been issued and endorsed by the Taliban authorities, is made up of 10 chapters and 119 articles and reflects the group’s intent to monopolize power, redefine social hierarchy and legitimize the widescale use of centuries-old violence in the 21st century.

The publication of the Taliban’s new penal code marks yet another step in their effort to drag the country back into a medieval order, this time under the guise of a seemingly legal document.
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Despite that refusal by the Taliban, Zohra continues working on new editions. “I believe these books will stand as a legacy of women’s resistance in Afghanistan’s history,” she says.

More than 140 of the titles were banned solely because their authors were women.

Inside Afghanistan, some women continue to write, often at great risk. Nazanin, writes short stories and essays from her home in a province near Kabul. “Sometimes it feels like the Taliban’s gun barrel is pointed directly at my throat,”
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In Badghis, Taliban fighters arrived at a private clinic and ordered staff to destroy all contraceptives.“‘If we see you give this to women again, we will close your clinic,’ they said,” recalls the doctor.
This report has been published in partnership with @theguardian.com

Since the Taliban’s informal birth-control ban began, contraceptives have disappeared and clinics have closed. This report reveals a reproductive health system in free fall, where forced pregnancies and untreated complications now define daily life.
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Even more, the Taliban have targeted the roots of women’s confidence and joy by banning artistic and athletic activities.

The incident strips the mask from those who claim in international forums that the Taliban have changed, that they’ve softened their hardline beliefs. The reality in the streets of Herat and Kabul is nothing short of blatant gender apartheid.

Khadija Ahmadzada’s arrest in Herat is far more than a simple headline about an athlete. It is a mirror reflecting the systemic policy of erasing women across territories under Taliban control.
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The Taliban penal code is a manual for legalized abuse 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 ...

The Taliban penal code is a manual for legalized abuse
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The words slave and master may sound offensive today to many. Even in Afghanistan, formal slavery no longer exists as people are not openly labeled as slaves and masters. In practice, however, the Taliban system is quasi-slaveholding.
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The murder of a woman journalist whose death wasn’t even reported She was killed after midnight,  in one of the apartment buildings in the city centre of Maima. Her cries for help pierced the stillness of the night — cries the walls heard, but no one answered, thoug...

The murder of a woman journalist whose death wasn’t even reported
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The vanishing coverage of women’s lives is a policy risk This op-ed is published in partnership with More to Her Story and Middle East Uncovered.  Sarah Little and Zahra Nader In 2023, I remember sitting with a teenage girl in a motel room in Jordan who was...

The vanishing coverage of women’s lives is a policy risk
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Knowledge is resistance: Afghan women and STEM Prolonged crises always pose a threat to education but the current situation in Afghanistan is perhaps the most extreme case in decades. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where secondar...

Knowledge is resistance: Afghan women and STEM
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Chinese readers of my stories also noted that the lives of Afghan women reminded them of The Handmaid’s Tale. Was it a reality that had found its way into a book, or a fictional story that had entered our lived reality?
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Smuggling, detention, and survival: a woman’s journey through Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan Everything was cold and buried under snow when I set out on my journey to leave Afghanistan. I reached Herat after dark. With a suitcase in my hand, I joined three young men who had come on the same b...

Smuggling, detention, and survival: a woman’s journey through Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan
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In rural Afghanistan, women have long managed water use, sustained household agriculture, and passed down ecological knowledge critical to the survival of their families and communities. Yet they are also the most vulnerable to environmental collapse.
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“To imagine that school without the sound of girls feels like a nightmare,” Dr. Zarghona Obaidi says. “A single-gender society is a desperate society.”

Founded in 1948 as the Modern Women’s Education Center, Rabia Balkhi High School was one of Afghanistan’s most prominent girls’ schools for decades.

Rabia Balkhi High School has effectively been reduced to a girls’ primary school. Somaya, a staff member, says that of 56 classrooms once filled with students, only 17 are now in use. The others stand empty.
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Led by Afghan women, Zan Times is an investigative newsroom exposing human rights violations under Taliban rule. We provide fact-based reporting from inside Afghanistan, amplifying voices the Taliban wants to erase.
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Zulala Hashemi rose to public attention after appearing on one of Afghanistan’s most popular music competition programmes on Tolo TV, where she placed second among 12contestants. After the show ended, she disappeared from public view.
Read more: zantimes.com/2026/01/05/a...

‘Everything we had, they took away’: how women are defying the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on protest Since the Taliban’s return to power, women and girls have been barred from nearly every aspect of public life: schools, universities, most jobs and even parks.

‘Everything we had, they took away’: how women are defying the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on protest
This report has been published in partnership with the @theguardian.com
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“I began fight for the right to education from inside my home”: Interview with Rahil Talash Rahil Ansari Talash was born in Balkh Province. She studied law and political science and began her professional career as a literacy teacher. Starting in 2014, she worked in the private banking secto...

“I began fight for the right to education from inside my home”: Interview with Rahil Talash
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