2025/'24: Dec wk3 -2 -- Dec wk1 -- Nov wk4-2 -- Oct wk4 -- Oct wk3 -- Oct wk2 -- Sept wk3 -- Sept wk2 -- Sept wk1 -- August wk4 -- August wk3 -- August wk2 -- August wk1 -- July wk5 -- July wk4 -- July wk3 -- July wk2 -- July wk1 -- June wk4 -- June wk3 -- June wk2 -- June wk1 -- May wk5 -- May wk4 -- May wk3 -- May wk2P2 -- May wk2 -- May wk1 -- April wk4 -- April wk3 -- April wk2 -- April wk1 -- March wk4 -- March wk3 -- March wk2 -- March wk1 --  Feb wk4 -- Feb wk3 -- Feb wk2 -- Feb wk1 -- Jan wk5 -- Jan wk4 -- Jan wk2 -- Dec wk4 P2 -- Dec wk4 -- Dec wk3
Click here for earlier Straight of the Trenches stories

 When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'.Artali

NEWSFLASH: The demissionary government of the Netherlands has decided to evict Afghanistan refugee women
back reasoning that if they will accept and adjust to the talibans regime of oppression no harm will be their faith!!!

Womens' Fight for Education
Zan Times - Dec 17, 2025 - by Khadija Haidary
{“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 sector and then, in 2017, she was recruited as a staff member at the UN-Habitat office in northern Afghanistan, where she worked until 2019. After relocating to Kabul, she joined the Ministry of Communications to work in the Afghan telecom sector. At the same time, Rahil Talash has consistently been active in social and civic work, including serving as the deputy of the Northern Afghanistan Youth Organization in Balkh. Following the fall of Kabul in 2021, she was among the first women protesters to take to the streets, raising her voice against the Taliban’s takeover of the country and the widespread violations of women’s rights. As a result of these activities, she was directly threatened and pursued by the Taliban. After moving residence several times for her own security, she was forced to leave Afghanistan on November 4, 2021, and sought refuge in Pakistan. In Pakistan, she continued her protest activities by organizing and leading more than 50 demonstrations and protest actions against the situation of women and the broader human rights crisis in Afghanistan. In addition, she supported Afghan refugees, including through interpretation, counselling, and emergency assistance. Talash sought asylum in France earlier this year and now continues her activities from there; this interview was conducted beforehand.
This interview has been edited for style, clarity, and length:
Zan Times: In your own view, who is Rahil Talash?
Rahil Talash: Rahil Talash is a women’s rights defender, a social activist, a member of the leadership board of the Afghan Justice-Seeking Women’s Movement, the head of the Hazara Migrants Organization in Pakistan, a board member of a South Asia–based organization, and an active member of the Afghanistan Peace Dialogue initiative. For the past eight years, I have been engaged in the struggle for justice. My activism began inside my own home. In my family, girls were not allowed to study. With the support of my mother and without my father’s knowledge, I secretly pursued my education up to third grade. Later, I tried to enroll in literacy courses organized by Dr. Sima Samar but the coordinator initially refused to accept me because I was very young as those classes were intended for adult women who could neither read nor write. However, through persistence and determination, I was eventually able to join and complete three levels of study over the course of 18 months. It was there that I learned how to read and write. The first sentences I ever wrote were: “Afghanistan is my country. Afghanistan is beautiful. I love Afghanistan.” These words have remained deeply engraved in my mind ever since.
ZT: People know you as one of the Afghan women who protested in Pakistan. How did that movement come into being?
Talsh: After the collapse of Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover, I was the sole breadwinner of my family. Until the very day — and the very moment — the Taliban entered Kabul, I was at my workplace at the Ministry of Communications. We were dismissed from the office and told to go home as quickly as possible. In the first 24 hours, I felt like a lifeless body. I did nothing but cry. The next day, I messaged my colleagues and suggested we return to work. When Niloufar, Diba, Mojgan, and I reached the office gate, we were not allowed to enter. The Taliban treated us with extreme humiliation, saying, “Go back to your homes, shameless women. You come here for immorality. There is no place for immorality here anymore. Get lost.” We tried to return twice more, but each time we were met with abusive behaviour from the Taliban and forced to go back home. For a while, we were all depressed and exhausted, confined to our houses. Our salaries were frozen in the banks. I went hungry for a week. I was forced to eat stale, moldy dry bread soaked in water. Even now, it is painful for me to talk about those days. On September 3, 2021, I and a group of girls organized a street protest together. After several protests on the streets of Kabul, I was being pursued by the Taliban. I kept changing my place of residence and my movements, but I was still being followed. Eventually, I was forced to leave Afghanistan and seek refuge in Pakistan. The first protest we organized in Pakistan took place on March 8, 2022. Just like in Kabul, these gatherings were spontaneous. With the exchange of just a few messages, we came together and raised our voices. Dozens of protests followed — and they continue to this day.
ZT: Did these protests have a leadership? And where are they held?
Talash: There was no formal leadership. We coordinated through WhatsApp groups, where we consulted with one another and decided on the time and place, then gathered there. Most of these protests took place in Islamabad.
ZT: In total, how many protesters or women are working and active together?} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/12/17/i-began-fight-for-the-right-to-education-from-inside-my-home-interview-with-rahil-talash/

Afghan Women and girls haven't given up
Zan Times - Dec 10, 2025 - by Hajer Haidarnia
{My father married me off with an old man for a promise of eye treatment
When he proposed, my husband openly acknowledged he already had a wife and seven children. This narrative from Salima was told to a Zan Times journalist. Five years ago, my husband beat me so severely that I only remember losing consciousness from the pain and bleeding. When I woke up, my mouth was crooked, my chin broken, and every doctor who saw me asked who had beaten me. Before we went to the hospital, my husband made me swear not to say he had done it. He told me to say I had fallen off a motorcycle. When I looked at his old face and white beard, I felt pity and repeated the lie, even though he hit me in the aftermath of something my co-wife said. I had to travel twice to Kabul for surgery until my chin was fixed and the pain eased. The treatment cost 100,000 afghani. I am 28 years old and the mother of three children. I am originally from Kunduz. When I was five, one of my eyes clouded over and slowly became completely blind. Only once in my childhood did my father take me to a doctor, who recommended I come back when I grew older for surgery. Instead of getting my eye treated, my father married me off to a man his own age. I was 17. My husband was a driver on the Kunduz–Takhar route and had gotten to know my father during those trips. He told my father that he would get my eye treated after our marriage. My father was so pleased with the proposal. But that never happened after I moved to Takhar. Not only was my eye never treated but rarely has a day passed without violence. In the last 11 years, my husband has beaten me over the smallest of things, sometimes to the brink of death. When he proposed, my husband openly acknowledged he already had a wife and seven children. But my father was so happy to marry me to his friend that he didn’t care. After I went to my husband’s house, his wife and his children constantly harassed me. Whenever I complained, I was blamed instead of them. Sometimes after my co-wife complained about me, my husband told me to pack my things and he would drive me back to my parents’ home. Fearing my husband would again beat me, I would gather a few clothes and my chador and get into his car. I spent half of these last 11 years in my father’s house. Each time, my father would eventually hand me back to my husband. The last time he left me and our children with my parents, I stayed for a year. Finally, my brother told my husband that if he didn’t take his wife and children back, he would complain to the Taliban. So, three years ago, my husband returned, took us to another district, and rented a small house for 1,500 afghani a month for us. He told me that as long as he wasn’t there, I had no right to complain about anything. He visits every two or three weeks and brings a small amount of groceries, not enough even for one week. He always says, “How can an old man like me provide for two families equally?” To survive, I go to neighbours’ houses where I wash clothes, clean carpets, or do other chores in exchange for rice or other bits of food. Though I have just one good eye, I do embroidery, earning up to 300 afghani for each piece, which is enough to buy tea and soap. Some nights when I’m sewing late, I tell myself: If both my eyes were healthy, I could earn more. If my father or my husband had treated my eye, I wouldn’t be like this today. But none of them supported me. They threw me back and forth between themselves like a ball. Like me, my children have grown up without medical care. I have never taken them to a doctor. Whenever they get sick, my husband brings a bottle of syrup and says they will get better. In winter, I try hard to keep us from falling ill, because there is no one to take us to a clinic due to our poverty. As a woman who is blind in one eye, I have never received support from any institution. I consider myself a woman without a guardian, living alone with three children. My husband, my father, and no man in my family has ever helped me register as a person with a disability or receive assistance. Once I heard that my co-wife had used my ID card to collect aid. I knew better than to say anything to my husband as the only thing he knows is how to beat.  When he visits us, I must not complain about anything. Otherwise, he may stop coming altogether. So I stay silent and am grateful only that my children can at least feel they have a father who sometimes comes to see them.
Hajer Haidarnia is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist in Afghanistan.} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/12/10/my-father-married-me-off-with-an-old-man-for-a-promise-of-eye-treatment/

Face Flogging
Jinhagency - Womens News Agency - Dec 12, 2025 - By Baharan Flame
{Public Flogging: A Tool of Repression Plunging Afghanistan Into a Severe Human Rights Crisis
Public flogging has resurfaced under Taliban rule, becoming a political and social instrument of repression carried out without fair trials. This has led to escalating violence, widespread fear, and grave human rights violations—particularly against women
Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, one of the harshest forms of punishment has resurfaced: public flogging. While the Taliban justify these acts as “implementation of Sharia,” human rights organizations and the United Nations affirm that they constitute torture and a blatant violation of fundamental human rights. Public floggings are commonly carried out in sports stadiums, government courtyards, and even inside mosques, where residents are forced to attend. This forced presence aims to create an atmosphere of intimidation and fear. These punishments are typically imposed after rulings issued by Taliban-run courts—courts that lack credible evidence, due process, or the right to defense. Many individuals are convicted based on coerced confessions or minor family complaints. Unlike international legal standards, trials are held quickly and without any formal legal safeguards, leading to the punishment of numerous individuals for unclear reasons or without adequate evidence.
Acts that can lead to flogging include:
Communication with non-mahrams
A girl fleeing her home
Going out without a male guardian
Consuming alcohol
Extramarital relationships
Theft
Many of these actions are not crimes under international law, but the Taliban classify them as “Sharia offences.” Women are the most affected, as Afghan society attaches extreme sensitivity to women’s social standing, making public punishment especially devastating for them. Reports from media outlets and rights organizations show that women across provinces such as Faryab, Badghis, Takhar, Ghazni, Herat, Kabul, Bamyan, Ghor, and others have been publicly flogged for talking to non-mahrams, escaping domestic violence, or going out without a guardian. Some of these women reported being expelled from their families following the punishment, or facing severe stigma and ongoing social blame. Beyond the physical harm, the psychological impact is profound—chronic fear, depression, nightmares, and loss of self-confidence. International organizations, including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, have documented dozens of flogging cases, while noting that the actual numbers are far higher. Many incidents occur in remote areas, where residents fear reporting abuses. Strict restrictions on the media, the absence of independent journalism, and a climate of repression make documentation extremely difficult. As a result, available statistics remain mere figures on paper, without any meaningful legal action. Religious scholars and experts emphasize that the application of Islamic hudud punishments requires strict and precise conditions: credible witnesses, fair judicial procedures, and full rights of defense for the accused. None of these conditions exist under the Taliban’s judicial system. This transforms flogging from a religious ruling with procedural safeguards into a tool of social domination and political display. These practices have deeply affected society—spreading fear, restricting individual freedoms, intensifying pressure on women, and weakening the last remnants of the legal system. Citizens feel unprotected, vulnerable to public humiliation at any moment due to a simple accusation or minor complaint, reinforcing widespread insecurity and anxiety. Overall, public floggings under Taliban rule have escalated violence, fear, and mistrust within society, inflicting severe physical, psychological, and social harm, especially on women. The continuation of these practices highlights the extremely dangerous human rights situation in Afghanistan—a crisis demanding urgent intervention from the international community and human rights organizations. Unless these brutal punishments come to an end and a fair judicial system is established, Afghan citizens—particularly women—will remain exposed to fear, abuse, and injustice. This reality calls for immediate action from local, regional, and international entities to halt the suffering and curb the rise of repression.} Video-Source: https://jinhaagency.com/en/actual/public-flogging-a-tool-of-repression-plunging-afghanistan-into-a-severe-human-rights-crisis-38140


UN News - Dec 10, 2025 - By Vibhu Mishra
{Afghanistan’s crisis deepens as human rights recede and aid funding falls
Humanitarian needs across Afghanistan are rising against a backdrop of shrinking fundamental freedoms. Pictured here, a woman boils water outside her home that was damaged by floods in northern Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s worsening humanitarian crisis is being driven by the accelerating erosion of fundamental rights – especially for women and girls – alongside mass displacement, economic decline and shrinking aid, senior UN officials warned on Wednesday. Briefing the Security Council, Georgette Gagnon, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, and Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said nearly half the population will need protection and humanitarian assistance in 2026. Women and girls remain “systematically excluded” from almost all aspects of public life, Ms. Gagnon said, as the ban on secondary and higher education for girls has now entered its fourth year, depriving the country of future doctors, teachers and leaders. “Media freedom is increasingly restricted. Journalists face intimidation, detention and censorship, reducing the space for public debate and public participation,” she added. Afghans – both women and men – also face daily intrusions under the de facto authorities’ law on the “propagation of virtue and prevention of vice,” she added, describing a pattern of systematic interference in private life.
Humanitarian needs surging
At the same time, humanitarian needs are surging. Mr. Fletcher said that nearly 22 million people will need assistance next year, with Afghanistan now ranking among the world’s largest humanitarian crises. “For the first time in four years, the number of people facing hunger has gone up,” he warned. Some 17.4 million Afghans are now food insecure, while massive funding cuts have left the response “stretched to breaking point.” More than 300 nutrition delivery points have closed, leaving 1.1 million children without lifesaving nutrition, while 1.7 million face the risk of death without treatment. The health system is also buckling: 422 health facilities were closed in 2025, cutting three million people off from lifesaving care. The year 2025 has seen a marked increase in refugee returnees to Afghanistan. Pictured here, a scene at the Islam Qala border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran.

refugee mother and children
Refugees returning to hardship
Adding to the strain, Afghanistan has seen record refugee returns, with over 2.6 million Afghans returning in 2025 alone, bringing the two-year total to more than four million. Most arrive with few possessions and are absorbed into already impoverished communities. “Women and children made up 60 per cent of all returns this year,” Mr. Fletcher noted – returning to a country where women are barred from education, work and, in some cases, healthcare. Economic pressures are worsening despite modest growth. While GDP is expected to rise by 4.5 per cent, per capita income will fall by about four per cent due to population growth, according to World Bank figures cited by Ms. Gagnon. Rural livelihoods have also been devastated by the third year of the opium cultivation ban. Although welcomed internationally, UN agencies report a 48 per cent drop in rural incomes, with more support needed for alternative livelihoods.
Aid delivery crippled
While security conditions appear calmer than in past decades, tensions with Pakistan are rising amid cross-border exchanges linked to militant activity. At the same time, the closure of key border posts for two months has hurt trade and civilian life on both sides. Meanwhile, women’s participation in humanitarian work remains under direct assault. Since September, female national UN staff have been barred from accessing UN premises nationwide, a restriction Mr. Fletcher called “unacceptable” and warned was crippling aid delivery. “There can be no effective humanitarian response without women,” he said. “Afghanistan needs them.”
Rights increasingly out of reach
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also warned that rights in the country remain “out of reach for too many,” especially for women and girls. Involuntary returns are also placing journalists, former officials and civil society figures at heightened risk of reprisals. “Human rights are not optional. They are the everyday essentials that sustain life,” Ms. Gagnon said in a separate UNAMA statement. “For Afghanistan, ensuring women and girls can learn, work, and participate fully is indispensable to recovery.”
Call for international support
Despite severe constraints, the UN continues to deliver aid. More than $40 million in emergency funding has been released in recent months to respond to earthquakes, drought and mass returns. But Mr. Fletcher warned that underfunding is now costing lives. “As we look to 2026, we risk a further contraction of lifesaving help at a time when food insecurity, health needs a strain on basic services and protection risks are all rising,” he said. He stressed that without urgent attention of and support from the international community, the crisis would only worsen.} Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166560

UN News - Dec 10, 2025 - By Liudmila Blagonravova
{‘We won’t stop’: Afghan women keep businesses alive despite sweeping rights abuses
In Afghanistan, where sweeping restrictions have pushed most women out of public life, thousands are refusing to give up on work. For many, running a small business has become the only viable path to earning an income – and a way to support other women who have lost their jobs. With help from the UN, these entrepreneurs are keeping their livelihoods going, often in the face of intense social pressure and strict rules governing women’s movement. “It was difficult for women to sit at home. They had to come out of their houses and learn,” says Parwin Zafar, who runs a tailoring shop in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. She currently employs 16 women. Her business is one of the few spaces left where women can safely work and train others. Although women are barred from jobs in government, NGOs and the UN itself, many have found ways to continue working from home or in trades traditionally associated with women. These include textile production, food processing and carpet weaving – sectors that remain broadly accepted by both the de facto authorities and local communities.
A lifeline
“The one channel that exists for Afghan women is small businesses,” says Ms. Zafar. And the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is helping keep that channel open. The agency has supported more than 89,000 small enterprises across Afghanistan, 91 per cent of them led by women, creating over 439,000 jobs. “These are sectors where women have historically worked. There’s no questioning of these traditional businesses,” explains Waheeb Al Eryani, UNDP’s area manager in Mazar-i-Sharif. But acceptance does not mean ease. Many women still face opposition at home. For restaurant owner Shaista Hakimi, a mother of three, this has been painful and personal. Since her husband died two years ago, her father-in-law has pushed her to stop working altogether. “He says people will laugh at us because ‘your daughter-in-law is working’,” she explains. Yet her restaurant, which serves only women, has become a vital community space – and a source of income for 18 women she now employs.
Staying afloat with UN support
Ms. Hakimi kept her business alive thanks to a UNDP loan and is now applying for a matching grant that would allow her to expand and secure safer accommodation. “I can rent another place or building where I could live and do my work as well,” she says. Ms. Zafar’s story mirrors her experience. When her previous business faltered, she received a subsidised UNDP loan, invested in new equipment and rebuilt her tailoring workshop. She now employs 16 women. “Thank God, I was able to start my business again. This is how I can help more women,” she says.
Navigating strict rules
Even the most successful women entrepreneurs have little choice but to rely on male relatives. Decrees requiring women to travel with a male guardian – a mahram – severely limit their ability to deliver goods, meet customers or negotiate with suppliers. “Women are not allowed to go places without a mahram. Especially if we want to deliver products to other provinces, we cannot do that,” Ms. Zafar explains. To keep their businesses running, many rely on husbands, brothers or sons who can travel freely. “They leverage their networks,” says Mr. Al Eryani. “If they cannot access the market, male relatives will sell the products or finalise deals with wholesalers.” “Men we are related to are supportive. They try to sell our products in the community,” Ms. Zafar adds.
Resilience in the face of crisis
Access to markets and finance remains among the biggest hurdles. Only four per cent of Afghan women have access to international markets, and obtaining a loan often requires multiple guarantors – a barrier few can overcome. Yet the entrepreneurs supported by UNDP are finding ways to persist, even as new challenges emerge. With large numbers of Afghans recently returning from Iran and Pakistan, several women-led businesses have stepped up to offer jobs to returnees. “With UNDP’s support, they employed 20, 30, sometimes 40 returnees per business,” says Mr. Al Eryani. “They became agents of support and contributors rather than recipients of help.”
An uncertain future
Despite their resilience, the future for Afghan businesswomen remains uncertain. With girls barred from education beyond Year 6, the next generation risks missing out on the skills needed to run a business or manage finances. Shaista’s restaurant welcomes women for on-site dining, while delivery and pick-up services are available for both men and women. UNDP in Afghanistan Shaista’s restaurant welcomes women for on-site dining, while delivery and pick-up services are available for both men and women. “There is a lack of access to financial education,” Ms. Zafar says. “The support we are receiving is not enough.” For now, Afghan women entrepreneurs continue to hold their communities together – creating jobs, passing on skills and proving every day that they will not be pushed out of public life entirely. But without wider access to education and sustained international support, the space they have carved out may shrink even further.} Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166549

Iranwire - Dec 8, 2025 - By Maryam Dehkordi
{Love and Survival: Afghan Couple in Iran Defies Tradition, Faces Death Threats
The threatening messages arrive on Instagram with regularity.
"We won't let you live," the texts say, targeting a young couple whose only crime was choosing love over an arranged marriage. For two years, Reyhan and Reza have lived as fugitives in Iran, hiding from her family in a structure that barely qualifies as shelter. No running water. No gas for heating. Just four walls, a roof, and the constant fear that each night might be their last. "Whether we'll see tomorrow is a question we ask ourselves every night when we go to sleep," Reyhan, 23, tells IranWire. The couple's names have been changed to protect their safety. But their story illuminates the harsh reality facing some young women in Afghanistan's diaspora communities, where traditional practices of arranged marriage have migrated alongside families who fled war decades ago. Reyhan and Reza were born in Iran to Afghan families who arrived 40 years ago seeking refuge. They grew up as Iranians in all but paperwork, attending school and working manual labor jobs alongside their fathers and brothers. When Reyhan's older sister married Reza's brother, the two fell in love as teenagers. "We were children, but I was in love with Reza, and he was in love with me," Reyhan says. "We were an ordinary family. Actually, a bit below ordinary. You know migrants don't suffer any less hardship in Iran." Both families knew about their feelings. For years, it seemed inevitable they would marry.
Then money changed everything.
A wealthy relative approached Reyhan's father with a proposition: Marry your daughter to my son, and I'll solve your financial problems. Reyhan's family, struggling with poverty, saw an opportunity. Reza, who was just starting a small business, had nothing to offer but his devotion. "My father and brothers said Reza has nothing," Reyhan recalls. "You must forget about him and accept the new suitor, but it wasn't possible." Reyhan made it to fifth grade before dropping out due to economic hardship. She had little formal education but understood clearly what her family intended. "I said, Reza, they're selling me. We have to do something." Reza's family made multiple attempts to negotiate, bringing respected community elders to ask for Reyhan's hand in marriage. Each time, her father and brothers refused. "The only thing that mattered to them was getting the money they had been promised," Reza says. "Not only me, but even Reyhan's feelings didn't matter at all." The couple knew their options were limited. According to their community's customs, if a couple married, families traditionally could not interfere. Both were legally old enough to obtain court permission.
They decided to act.
"We took action without the family knowing, but this time our luck was different," Reza says. "Reyhan's family saw both the promised money slipping away and their pride wounded." Her family destroyed the marriage registration documents. They beat Reyhan. They pressured the wealthy suitor's family to accelerate wedding plans. But Reza and Reyhan consulted a lawyer through a friend, who concluded that their marriage was valid. They decided to flee. "We said we'll go somewhere, set up a small nest," Reza recalls. "Gradually, the families' anger will subside. Reyhan said that at most, they'll disown us. I really thought the same, but their resentment was extreme." Reyhan's brothers attacked Reza's brother. Even Reyhan's sister, who had married into Reza's family, turned against them. One by one, relatives cut ties. The couple's old life disappeared. For two years, they have moved every few months, staying wherever Reza's loyal friends could arrange shelter. They turned off their old SIM cards, severing their last connections to home. They live with the knowledge that Reyhan's family has circulated their photographs among members of the Afghan community, with instructions to report any sightings. Their current refuge is a bare concrete structure owned by a friend's family. It lacks basic utilities. They heat themselves and cook food over an open fire. The property is for sale, and they don't know where they'll go next. "I don't know how long we can endure like this," Reza says. The threatening messages escalate the fear. Filled with vulgar, sexist insults targeting the women in Reza's family, the threats make clear that discovery means death. The couple receives them regularly on Instagram, their only remaining connection to the outside world. "My brother said a few months ago that Reyhan's brothers gave our photos to our compatriots so that wherever they see us, they'll tell them," Reza says. "Life has become such that we go to sleep every night in fear." The constant stress nearly claimed Reyhan's life. Overwhelmed by her circumstances, she bought two boxes of pills, intending to end her life. Reza woke up that night and stopped her. "I don't think about myself at all," he says. "Now it doesn't matter to me what fate I'll have. I'm only worried about Reyhan." All the money Reza saved throughout his life is gone, spent on survival. He can't work because the threats force him to stay hidden. The couple watches their resources dwindle with no clear path forward. Reza has contacted everyone he can think of who might help, from the United Nations to human rights organizations. The situation facing Reyhan and Reza reflects broader challenges for Afghan refugees in Iran, where millions live in limbo without full legal status. Within these communities, traditional practices from Afghanistan persist, including arranged marriages and honor-based violence. Human rights organizations have documented cases where families use violence to enforce marriage decisions, particularly when financial considerations are involved. Women who resist arranged marriages face ostracism, assault, and sometimes death. Despite everything, the couple finds meaning in their struggle. "We've done something for the family that will benefit the girls," Reyhan says. "We know that girls in our family will probably resist force less. They'll find it harder to tolerate someone else making decisions for them after this." She believes their defiance, despite the cost, will make it harder for families to arrange marriages without consent. Even the men, she says, will now ask girls whether they consent before finalizing marriage plans. "Just the fact that fewer girls in the tribe will be bought and sold like other men's property means to us that it was worth this hardship," she says.} Source: https://iranwire.com/en/features/146853-love-and-survival-afghan-couple-in-iran-defies-tradition-faces-death-threats/


Zan Times - Dec 8, 2025 - by Khadija Haidary
{‘I write because acceptance is impossible’: Farida Faryad on memory, violence, and women’s voices
Farida Faryad was born in 1992 in Kabul and later moved to Jaghori district of Ghazni province, where she completed her primary and secondary education in 2011. In 2015, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Persian language and literature from Kabul Education University. She then continued her studies at the master’s level at the Kabul branch of Payam-e-Noor University, where she graduated in 2019. Today, Farida is a Ph.D. student at the University of Gilan in Iran and is researching Persian language and literature. She currently lives in France and has recently published two books: The Collector of Sorrows in French, and then The Women’s love-sorrow in Persian. Zan Times’ Khadija Haidary interviewed Farida about memory, forced displacement, trauma, meaning of women’s sorrow, and why she thinks of writing as an act of survival and resistance. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Zan Times: Who is Farida Faryad? How do you describe yourself as a writer?
Farida Faryad: To be honest, the word “writer” feels overwhelmingly large to me. It is a title that immediately evokes the giants of Persian and world literature, and gives the term a profound weight in my mind. At the same time, I can’t deny that, perhaps unconsciously, this word has nestled itself somewhere between the lines of my books. But given the small and unripe knowledge I have, I see myself as too insignificant to deserve such a title. When I introduce myself, I must say: Farida is a girl like thousands of Afghan girls born in the heart of war, and raised in the shadow of ruins and bigotry. When she came to know herself, she found herself drawn into the sorrows of her own people and before she could even pack her bags, she was forced out of her home and her homeland, a place where guns are placed in the hands of children instead of pens. Now, living in another corner of the world, I write to be the echo of those voices. My experience was not formed in a vacuum but in the midst of structural violence, forced migration, and the systematic erasure of marginalized voices. That is why I want to recount these experiences — experiences that political equations have always pushed to the margins.
ZT: When and how did you end up in Paris, and did that migration give you the space to confront the sorrows ahead of you, the sorrows behind you, and the sorrows of Afghan women today?
Faryad: Coming to Paris, even though it was the city of my dreams, wasn’t a conscious decision. It was the result of the same sudden, unwanted rupture I mentioned earlier. Like the fate of thousands who were cast into uncertainty after the rise of Taliban to power, my arrival happened within an extremely short window of time and without preparation, so fast, so unbelievable, that I am still trying to understand its psychological mechanisms. This forced geographical displacement was initially very difficult. It created a kind of conceptual homelessness, not just a physical rupture from my homeland, but also a rupture from language, oral history, and collective memory. Yet, as Homi Bhabha describes the “in-between space,” it is precisely this borderland that allows for rethinking, rereading oneself, rewriting the past, and redefining the future. Since I had been immersed in the themes of women’s love and sorrow in recent years, this “third space” gave me the opportunity to rethink both. Distance from home did not lead to forgetting, that will never happen. Instead, the world of migration became a ground for seeing past sorrows more clearly, for understanding present challenges, and for confronting the growing terror that Afghan refugees, especially women and children, face each day. Maybe this distance also became a way to scream out what remained silenced and is still suppressed on our own soil.
ZT: In a previous interview you said your mother left you in a mosque during the war when you were a three-month-old infant. How did you come to terms with it? Do you believe that a  terrified mother who left her baby in a mosque to save her own life deserves the respect, forgiveness, and love of her daughter?
Faryad: I heard this story from my mother herself, who occasionally spoke about the Afshar massacre [in which mujahideen gunmen killed scores of Hazara civilians in the Afshar district of Kabul in 1993]. I never asked her “Why?” because I never wanted to judge her for her decision, and I still don’t.  As for respect, forgiveness, and love toward such a mother, for me, there is no doubt at all. Afshar was not just an “incident.” In this bloody chapter of our history. A chapter in which the human body, especially the female body, was not only the target of bullets, but the site of plunder, assault, and violation by the same people who today pose as heroes. What can a mother do in that horrifying moment, surrounded by violence, with six small children? She was voiceless, defenseless, without refuge. Her decision may be painful, even unbearable, but morally and historically, it must be understood within the context of conditions that stripped her of every human option. She acted not out of neglect or coldness, but out of a primal instinct for survival, a decision that in itself is a scream against injustice. The scream of a frightened, trembling woman abandoned among bullets.
ZT: Have you ever wondered whether, if you had been a baby boy, your mother might not have left you in the mosque?
Faryad: The role of gender in my mother’s decision undoubtedly has roots in patriarchal structures that assign different values to sons and daughters. However, my mother’s experience cannot be judged by the usual scales of gendered values. That moment was not a time for choosing between a boy or a girl. It was a moment of survival, an explosion of reality, a moment in which she stood between life and death. In such conditions, maternal love surpasses the symbolic order of patriarchy. What moved my mother in that terrifying moment was not a conscious gender-based preference, but a reflex of fear and survival, a decision she might have made even if the baby had been a boy, because I was at the time gravely ill and on the edge of life and death. That is why I believe that not only my mother, but any mother confronting such circumstances would hold her child beyond the boundaries of gender. Such decisions must be analyzed within the traumatic context of the Afshar massacre and the structural violence inflicted on women, within the framework of gendered psychology.
ZT: You’ve spoken about the long period of depression you experienced in adolescence and your preference for isolation. Did this prolonged confrontation with yourself turn you into a “collector of women’s sorrow”?
Faryad: Yes. The depression that darkened my teenage years was not merely a psychological state, but an existential response to the violent and discriminatory society in which I lived. It was  a society whose structural violence targeted women and children above all. I am one among thousands of others like me who became victims of collective and historical violence. My depression was a reflection of constant insecurity, of ethnic–religious and gender marginalization, and of wounds that never had the chance to heal. My confrontation with sorrow was not voluntary; it arose from the necessity of understanding. What I wrote in The Collector of Sorrows is not only a depiction of women’s suffering, but a map of the systemic discriminations that have placed ethnicity, religion, the female body, the female voice, and women’s choices as their primary targets. As for isolation, it was never a choice for me, but a forced habit. The result of a situation in which children, especially girls, are deprived of choice, experience, and even movement. Girls must learn caution from their earliest days to avoid “bringing shame” to society — a traditional, patriarchal, controlling society. For me, isolation was a form of “forced safety,” a place beyond judging eyes. In short, this isolation, depression, and confrontation with painful sorrows has allowed me to narrate women’s suffering not from the outside, but from within.
ZT: As an Afghan woman writer who collects women’s sorrows, how did you confront your own sorrow and decide that “women’s sorrow” is something that must be addressed?
Faryad: We cannot come to terms with collective sorrow. In my view, accepting it means surrendering to it. The sorrow I speak of is historical, social, and gendered — the sorrow of women who were pushed aside in the past and who are still pushed aside today. In such situations, silence cannot be the answer, and acceptance cannot be the solution. I write because moving on is impossible. Writing, for me, is an attempt to expose what has been hidden, to disobey the rule of the powerful, and to build a collective memory of pains that have been denied. This sorrow must be narrated because it carries an erased memory, a language of resistance, and the possibility of rewriting history.
ZT: Tell us more about The Collector of Sorrows. How was it received and understood by French-speaking readers?
Faryad: Although a bit more than a year has passed since its publication, the book has sparked remarkable and unexpected reactions in French-speaking society — so much so that it is already in its fourth printing.  For me, this reception was not merely a literary success; it affirmed that the voices of women from my homeland can be heard and can have impact even in the most distant places — but only if we do not stop trying and do not allow their cries to be silenced.
After the book was published on October 4, 2024, we decided to have parts of it performed musically by the French comedian Odile Bertotto, and to stage the program wherever possible. So far, we have successfully held 16 performances across different French cities. At many events, French-speaking audiences reacted deeply — sometimes with shock — to the book’s content. They not only sympathized with the stories of ethnic discrimination and gendered violence in Afghanistan, but engaged in critical reflection. One reader wrote to me: “This book is a kick to the silence of the international community and the indifference of world powers toward the situation of Afghan women. It is as if your words scream the wounds.” I am glad that, in my own small way, I helped awaken people for whom human suffering simply matters to the sorrow of Afghan women.
ZT: Tell us about your second book, The Love-Sorrow of Women. How did you decide that working on women’s folk couplets and the theme of women’s love-sorrow could help portray Afghan women today?
Faryad: My research began with the question of “woman,” viewed through the lens of sorrow. I wanted to understand the issue before approaching it more deeply. Reading women’s folk couplets, especially among the Hazaras, which I relate to most because they reflect my own lived experience, pushed me to continue. With my limited knowledge, I picked up the pen, and the sorrow of my fellow women compelled me not to stop. Through reading these couplets, I realized that oral literature in general and folk couplets and tales can be powerful tools to introduce the contemporary condition of Afghan women, because they act as repositories of collective memory. Culture is not an instant phenomenon; it is a historical process shaped over time and passed from generation to generation. Women’s oral couplets — especially those created and preserved by women — contain layers of lived experience, love, sorrow, resistance, and silence. I believe cultural research brings women closer to the modern world and removes obstacles so that systems of domination can no longer maintain control over women’s lives or manipulate reality to serve themselves. Oral literature is one of the few cultural arenas where we can trace women’s presence across history and observe diverse dimensions of their lives. So while my analysis of Hazara folk couplets may not have immediate practical impact, it undoubtedly carries immense significance for cultural and historical awareness, for re-recognizing women’s identity, emotional memory, and hidden structures of pain. These couplets are not merely a medium of expressing women’s emotions, they are living documents of our social reality. Future generations, by returning to them, can gain a deeper understanding of the suppressed history of Afghan women.
ZT: In reading these couplets, I often felt that women — Hazara women and Afghan women in remote villages who have more access to mountains and fields than to cities and institutions — are the real creators of these verses. From what perspective did you study women’s couplets?
Faryad: Yes, I believe that most creators of folk couplets and tales are women who lacked access to formal cultural institutions but were deeply connected to nature, suffering, and oral language. Folk couplets and stories have a distinctly feminine perspective. But with societal changes and the influence of power structures, these narratives sometimes undergo distortion as men alter them to serve their own interests. I’ve explained this in The Love-Sorrow of Women. I did not study couplets merely as literary forms. I read them as social and political texts about power and control, in whose hidden layers lie relationships of authority, gender, control, and women’s lived experience. My analysis drew on theories such as Kate Millett’s sexual politics and Stephanie Gert’s sociology of gender — frameworks that examine how one group (men) establishes dominance over another (women) through cultural, social, and linguistic structures, and distinguish between sex (biological reality) and gender (a social construct). These distinctions allow us to see how couplets, which appear to be about love or daily life, actually reflect mechanisms of control, resistance, and women’s lived realities.
ZT: In Hazara couplets, you discuss how a woman’s identity in Afghanistan is tied to the men of her family. How long do you think it will take and what will it require for women to gain identities independent from their male family members?
Faryad: A woman’s identity is not only defined in Afghanistan but across patriarchal and authoritarian societies in relation to the men of her family. Hazara couplets also reflect this. But this dependency is not natural; it is the product of systems of power and cultural structures. These structures are deeply rooted in a society’s culture. As I said earlier, they do not change overnight. But an independent identity becomes possible when a woman recognizes her own authority, not the authority granted to her by men, but the real authority she claims for herself, when she thinks of herself, and simply considers herself “human,” beyond gender. When her humanity is not defined through a man. The awareness that women, like men, have rights, will, and human dignity is the starting point of liberation. Achieving this transformation requires rethinking cultural narratives, reforming educational systems, and expanding women’s access to knowledge, language, and public spaces.
Khadija Haidary is a Zan Times journalist and editor.} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/12/08/i-write-because-acceptance-is-impossible-farida-faryad-on-memory-violence-and-womens-voices/

Zan Times - Dec 6, 2025 - by Atia FarAzar
{The night 400 Afghan families were stormed, beaten, and uprooted in Islamabad
The attack occurred at precisely 1:35 a.m. on the night of November 25. Every night, 50 men from the families took turns patrolling around the tents in Argentina Park, Islamabad, to protect the girls, the widows, and all the families sleeping inside. Suddenly, we heard shouting: “Wake up! We are surrounded by the police!” The situation was so terrifying that even remembering it brings me to tears. Suddenly, without warning, the police entered the park and stormed our sleeping places, beating and arresting us. Everyone was screaming. A seven-year-old child was kicked so violently that blood was pouring from his head and mouth. A one-year-old baby was trampled under a police officer’s feet; they took that child from Haji Camp to the hospital, and he remained in a coma for two days. I do not speak Urdu. They grabbed me tightly. At that very moment, I couldn’t find my children. I was screaming, “Let me go for one moment — my sons are lost!” But they held me like a criminal, and were striking the back of my head and neck so hard that even now my body feels shattered and I can barely move. My children were beaten the same way. They stripped us of our dignity. My name is Mansori and I am 29 years old. My husband died five years ago in Afghanistan because of kidney failure after an unsuccessful transplant. I have four young sons. After my husband’s death, his family tried to force me to marry his brother. I refused, but was also afraid they would take my children away from me. So when one of the women activists announced that she could secure visas for 250 vulnerable women — widows, protesters, and journalists to move to Pakistan — I secretly left Afghanistan without my in-laws’ permission and entered Pakistan. That was three years ago. I have been living in hiding. I never give interviews or appear in protest videos so that no one would recognize me. My time in Pakistan has been some of the hardest days of my life. I do not have a refugee case, nor a financial sponsor. To feed my four underage children, I clean houses and do whatever work I can find. A friend told me to register with UNHCR. I registered, and I call them two or three times a week to explain my problems, but they only say, “Your case is blocked,” without explaining why. I am a single mother with four young children — what more hardship must I endure? But no one seems to understand our situation. Around five months ago, when the Pakistani government announced that landlords should no longer rent to migrants, my landlord began harassing me because I had neither a valid visa nor proper documents. On friends’ advice, I took refuge in Argentina Park. I repeatedly applied for housing, but they refused every time, saying, “We cannot rent to Afghans; the government will fine us.” I had no choice but to stay in Argentina Park, joining 400 other families also forced from their accommodation. These 400 families — including widows, protesters, civil activists, journalists, girls fleeing forced marriages, and even cancer patients — lived in tents through the summer heat, the heavy rains, biting insects, and dangerous mosquitoes. My sons fell sick with fever many times. Despite our poverty and loneliness, I endured all of it. The night of the police attack, Diba Farahmand, who coordinated the camp, was also severely beaten. The police forced all of us into vehicles for Haji Camp. Those without visas were deported. Thankfully, my visa had arrived just four days earlier. I was allowed to leave Haji Camp with my children. Since being released, I can barely move from the pain in my body. My children also suffer. My eldest son, who is 12, keeps saying, “Mother, my throat hurts so much,” because they dragged him and threw him into the vehicle. All our belongings — our carpet, our blankets, everything — were looted. Now I have nothing. I do not know what to do. My children are deeply traumatized, and we are in a desperate situation on every level. For now, we are staying at a friend’s house. Her husband sells chips on the street, and they give the leftover chips as food.. When I ask for help in activists’ groups, their male staff mock me, saying: “Go back to Afghanistan, put on a chadari, and live your life.”
I am terrified: terrified of being deported; terrified my husband’s family will find me. I fear what will become of us if we are forced back. Among my in-laws, relatives, and community, I am known as “the runaway.” Afghanistan has become a slaughterhouse and graveyard. Everyone is fleeing. We abandoned our homes and our lives and came to Pakistan out of desperation, believing this neighbouring and “friendly” country would shelter us. But instead, they humiliated us. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer.} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/12/06/the-night-400-afghan-families-were-stormed-beaten-and-uprooted-in-islamabad/

Malala Yousafzai and father Ziauddin Yousafzai
Zan Times - Nov 10, 2025 - by Ziauddin Yousafzai
{Letter from Ziauddin Yousafzai, co-founder of Malala Fund, for Afghan men
To Afghan fathers and brothers,
I have been where you are now. I was once a father watching helplessly as the Taliban tried to erase my daughter’s future. In 2008, they took over our town in Swat Valley and forbade our girls from going to school. My daughter, Malala, risked her life to speak out against this injustice. Over the last four years, your daughters and sisters have been fighting for their dreams and ambitions — learning in secret, expressing themselves through poetry and art, resisting in every way they can. And I have seen your courage too: male students walking out of their classrooms in protest as their female classmates were barred from learning, fathers risking everything to make sure their daughters can continue their education, families and communities opening their homes to support underground schools. You know that every girl deserves an education, and your bravery and love are keeping hope alive.
As Muslim men — whether in safety or in struggle — we are called by our faith to stand with girls and women in defending their right to learn, to work and to move freely. Education is not a Western idea; it is a sacred duty. The Prophet (peace be upon him) taught us that seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim — man and woman alike. Our own history affirms this: Khadija, a successful businesswoman, and Aisha, one of the greatest scholars of Islam, each embodied the power of learning guided by faith. I know these are difficult and dangerous times. To stay silent in the face of injustice can feel safer, but it is to turn away from our faith’s legacy. Speaking against the Taliban’s gender apartheid regime is frightening, but remaining silent is far more terrifying because nothing will change on its own. To speak out is both a father’s duty and a believer’s duty to protect the dignity and future of our daughters. To every brave Afghan father and brother helping girls learn: I salute your courage. Never give up hope, and remember you are not alone. Malala Fund will continue standing with and supporting you. Until Afghanistan is free from gender apartheid, every home must become a secret school, every kitchen a classroom, every living room a place of resistance. You can shift cultural expectations and behaviours in your homes and show that valuing girls’ education is a mark of integrity and strength. You can create an environment where learning is protected, even when the world outside is hostile:
●      Teach reading, math or other skills at home. Even basic lessons, practiced consistently, help girls continue their education.
●      Share resources: Use phones and the internet (where possible) to download books, podcasts or educational videos. Organisations like Begum Organization, Education Bridge for Afghanistan and LEARN Afghan provide courses through radio, satellite television and online.
●      Encourage study circles: Brothers can quietly gather cousins, sisters or neighbours to read and study together, providing companionship and safety.
●      Model respect: Men should praise and encourage girls’ learning, showing boys that supporting their sisters’ education is honourable.
●      Create time and space: Brothers and fathers can take on household chores so girls have time to study.
●      Keep hope alive: Words of encouragement strengthen girls’ resilience in the face of oppression.
Remember that the Taliban can take away girls’ schools, jobs and public spaces, but they cannot take what lives in your heart and mind, nor the knowledge you choose to pass on. Your courage at home today strengthens the fight for girls and women’s freedom everywhere.
In solidarity,
Ziauddin Yousafzai, co-founder of Malala Fund} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/11/10/letter-from-ziauddin-yousafzai-co-founder-of-malala-fund-for-zan-times/

Women's Liberation Front 2019/cryfreedom.net 2025