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 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.

Zan Times - April 10, 2025 - By: Mursal Sayas
<<The brilliance of Afghanistan’s girls on the French stage
In the summer of 2021, Afghanistan descended into disaster as the Taliban seized control of the country. Artists, journalists, writers, and human rights activists fled for their lives. As girls of theatre, we also left the country aboard a military aircraft in the middle of the night. In Paris, we were temporarily housed in a hotel for two weeks. We were exhausted — by war, displacement, the loss of our homeland, and by the uncertainty of what lay ahead. Then, after the quarantine period required during the pandemic, our group was scattered as we were sent to different cities. Eventually, the girls’ theatre group settled in the city of Lyon, France. That was the beginning of a new chapter: the birth of the Afghanistan Girls Theatre in exile. From April 4 to April 13, 2025, this theatre group is staging a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone called The Messenger in Farsi at the prestigious Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, one of Paris’s most magnificent theatres. Over two weeks, they perform their one-hour-and-forty-five minute production for a French and international audience drawn to their story. As I entered that theatre, I was greeted by the sound of cheerful music. The girls were dancing and splashing water. They were full of joy and life. Suddenly, the monster of oppression descended, stole their happiness and locked them behind the windows of their homes. The music stopped as joy turned to sorrow. Their eyes filled with fear. They were young girls on the brink of adolescence who were forced to grow up. They were suddenly turned into women whose thoughts, voices, movements, presence, and even bodies were placed under the control of others. It was not they who decided their fate, but their rulers. Words had changed meaning – good became bad, and bad was praised. The people of the city were caught between the commands of the rulers and the voice of their own conscience. To win the approval of those in power, they turned against one another, all the while grieving in their hearts and aware of the injustice of their actions. Even that guilt wasn’t enough to stop them from hurting one another to to gain a sliver of favour from their masters.
Antigone is reborn in the language of exile
A fresh and powerful wind begins to blow from the very first rehearsals of Antigone. On stage, the young women appeared like warriors emerging from the heart of resistance. Their performance is raw and honest, as if the pain and experiences they carry are erupting from within. The theatre falls into stunned silence. Drawn into the story through the actors’ movements, words, and gazes, the audience bursts into laughter or is moved to tears during the play. Under the imaginative direction of Jean Bellorini, the ancient tragedy has been transformed into a contemporary manifesto. The stage is covered with water beneath a massive moon suspended in the sky. The lighting and sound design is masterful. The actresses play all the roles in this version of Antigone. The Messenger is delivered in Farsi, with French subtitles, and every word, every gesture, carries both political and human weight as the line between myth and reality dissolves. Their performance oscillates between the joy of acting and the sorrow of exile, between vivid embodiment and subtle allusion. Antigone — the girl who says, “No” — becomes a mirror of these Afghanistan’s young women’s fate.
Opposite her, Creon the tyrant becomes a symbol of Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada and every misogynistic, authoritarian ruler who craves domination and control.
‘The Messengers’: The unsilenced voice of women
“The Messengers” is more than a theatre performance. These young women — Hassania Ahmadi, Freshta Akbari, Atefa Azizpour, Sadiya Hosseini, Shakila Ebrahimi, Shogofa Ebrahimi, Marzia Jafari, Tahera Jafari, and Sohaila Sakhizadah — are the voices of a generation that refuses to let Afghanistan be forgotten. Their presence, their voices, their hope are reminders of the resilience, dreams, and struggle of the girls of Afghanistan.
As I watch, I can’t help but think, “If only these scenes were unfolding not in exile, but in our homeland.” These women are treasures of that land who could have contributed to Afghanistan’s cultural growth. But even before exile, they were never allowed to be the voices of love or beauty in their own country. There was no space for their art, light, or freedom in a society where anything that rises from a woman is deemed dishonorable and an offense to tradition and dignity.
A powerful performance born of collective creation
The success of The Messengers is the result of a close collaboration between Jean Bellorini, Hélène Patarot, Mina Rahnamayi, and Naïm Karimi. Every element — lighting, sound, costume, and set design — works in harmony to offer a profound message. The production was made possible with the support of the French Ministry of Culture and in partnership with the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.
The strength of The Messengers lies in its universality and radical humanism. In this reimagining of Antigone, we are confronted with urgent, timeless questions:
What is our responsibility?
How long can we remain silent?
And how can art revive the silenced voices of the world?
How many Antigones in Afghanistan have had to bury their hopes in silence?
At the end of the performance, the audience rose in a standing ovation. The applause and the emotional reactions from that passionate, art-loving crowd stood as a testament to the success of this powerful collective work.
Mursal Says is journalist and founder of Women Beyond Borders organization.>>
Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/04/10/the-brilliance-of-afghanistans-girls-on-the-french-stage/

And


Building a business as a woman
Zan Times - April 8, 2025 - By: Atia FarAzar
<<Narrative
Building a business as a woman: how do the Taliban treat women in government offices?
My workshop was inside a house in a village located just a few kilometres from the city of Faizabad. In September 2023, I decided to move the workshop’s branch into the city. But this required permission from the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. One day, a friend and I went to their office. When we reached the address, we were not allowed to enter. That department is built on hatred and exclusion of women. That day, even the gate guard didn’t look at us or speak to us directly. When I tried to talk to him, he walked away without answering and brought another man. That man, too, spoke to us with disdain and reluctance. Because of my gender, they treated me with disdain. They were ashamed of my presence in public and beside them. As I began to explain the reason for my visit, he cut me off and said, “Our boss will not see you. Go home and do housework. What does a woman have to do with business? Business is for men.” His words felt like bullets to the heart — cruel and dehumanizing. I firmly responded, “I have a license from the Taliban government — why shouldn’t I be allowed?” Without saying a word or allowing me to finish, he turned away and disappeared into his office. As a result, I was not able to open the city branch of my workshop in Faizabad.
My name is Khatereh, and I’m 28 years old. Before the Taliban, when I was studying economics at Badakhshan University, I also ran a small business alongside my education. At that time, a friend and I would buy inexpensive fabric, have it sewn by a tailor, and sell the finished clothes online, earning a small income. After graduation, I moved to Kabul and got a job in a government office. Like thousands of other girls, I had many dreams — to build a future, advance my career, and grow my business. But in the summer of 2021, when the Taliban entered the city, it felt as though all doors of hope had been slammed shut. Terror swept through Badakhshan. People panicked, desperately trying to flee the country — the airport was so crowded, there was barely room to stand. In Faizabad, nights echoed with the celebratory gunfire and rocket blasts of the Taliban, marking their victory. For someone like me — who, just days before, had been chasing her dreams — life under Taliban rule quickly became unbearable. As time passed, more and more restrictions were imposed on women. Women lost the right to study, work, or walk alone in public. To save myself from depression, I decided to resume my past work, with some adjustments. A few months after the Taliban came to power — in late 2021 — I launched a workshop with one trainer and eight students. Starting the workshop was not easy; I faced many challenges along the way. The Taliban had nearly doubled the licensing fees. The NGO license fee was raised from 30,000 afghani [USD 420] afghani to 50,000 [USD 700], and the business license fee from 10,000 [USD 140] to 18,000 afghani [USD 252]. I couldn’t afford the NGO license, so I registered under a business license instead. But with a business license, I can’t apply for projects or access development or assistance programs from international organizations that support women.
When I went to the tax office to pay the license fee, there was no guard at the gate. I nervously knocked and slowly entered. The director — a man with long hair, a long beard, and eyes lined with kohl — shouted at his guards the moment he saw me: “Why did you let this woman come in?” The guards dragged me out of his office and sent me to another section. Shaken and frightened, I entered the next department, where I was treated like a alien. It was clear they were deeply uncomfortable with a woman’s presence in their office. Without speaking a word to me, they processed my license fee and rushed me out. This kind of treatment wasn’t limited to government offices. Even when I went to buy materials for the workshop, drivers and shopkeepers would refuse to help me simply because I didn’t have a mahram. They were afraid of the Taliban. The Taliban had ordered that no driver was allowed to give a ride to a woman without a male escort. When I needed to go into the city to buy supplies, I often had to wait a long time by the roadside, until a kind-hearted driver would finally feel pity for me and take me into town. Before the Taliban came to power, I had started my business with just 2,500 afghani [USD 35]. After their return, I restarted my work with 25,000 afghani [USD 350]. I began again with one trainer and eight tailoring students. After some time, I also launched an engraving section alongside the tailoring. The engravers carve decorative designs on precious stones. Since the mining and market for gemstones in Badakhshan are thriving, I have been able to employ many women and girls. Today, more than 100 women and girls work in my workshop, each earning a monthly wage ranging from at least 1,000 afghani to as much as 15,000 afghani [USD 209]. Unfortunately, life for women keeps becoming more constrained. Under the Taliban’s rule, we women are oppressed under various pretexts. We are not allowed to travel or move around without a male escort. And recently, these restrictions have reached the point where even women’s voices are banned. Yet, despite the hardships and the many challenges I’ve faced — being rejected from offices because of my gender, being silenced and dismissed — I have not lost my sense of womanhood or my resolve. On the contrary, I feel that every new pressure only strengthens me. What began as a small workshop with one trainer and eight students has now become a workplace for one hundred women. Alongside the workshop, I am also in contact with a group of entrepreneurial young women, and we work together and support one another.
Atia FarAzar is the pen name of a Zan Times journalist.>>
Source:https://zantimes.com/2025/04/08/building-a-business-as-a-woman-how-do-the-taliban-treat-women-in-government-offices/

And


Denial of women
Zan Times - April 8, 2025 - By: Younus Negah
<<Denial of women, glorification of poverty, and idealization of rural life in Mullah Hibatullah’s sermon
During the month of Ramadan and the Eid that follows, discussions around hunger and poverty intensify. Clerics and politicians alike offer comfort to the poor while preaching to the wealthy. They speak of how hunger purifies the soul and strengthens faith, and they encourage the well-off to give alms and show compassion. Yet in this month, rarely do mullahs from the pulpit — or political leaders in Muslim societies — to speak of a fair distribution of resources, fighting exploitation, or real efforts to reduce poverty. Instead, the dominant message accepts inequality as God’s will.
In the rhetoric of mullahs, poverty carries no negative connotation. On the contrary, it is portrayed as a spiritual advantage. The term faqir (poor) is often used interchangeably with mystic. In the Taliban’s Emirate — an alliance of mullahs, lumpen elements, smugglers, and businessmen — poverty is openly praised, and the government distances itself from any responsibility for the people’s food security. Taliban leaders have repeatedly stated that they did not seize power to bring prosperity or comfort. They claim that people must ask God for their basic sustenance, insisting that each person’s portion was written at the dawn of time on the divine tablet, and that it is the duty of the poor to be patient and grateful. Yet these very mullahs, lumpen figures, and smugglers do not rely on God for their own sustenance. Instead, they reach into the pockets of both the hungry and the fed across Afghanistan and extract alms and taxes from cart vendors, farmers, shopkeepers, and traders. They plan their livelihoods, fight, and even kill for those funds.Competition over the distribution of the national budget, profits from mining revenues, control of lucrative customs and tax offices, and access to overt and covert foreign aid has brought powerful Taliban factions — particularly the camps of Mullah Hibatullah and the Haqqani network — to the brink of open conflict.
The rich’s mercy and the poor’s prayer
The weight of the people’s poverty overshadowed the joy of Eid — even during Mullah Hibatullah’s Eid sermon. He spoke at length to the poor who had gathered at the Eidgah to hear him, and through them, to the overwhelming majority of the hungry, whose unconditional obedience he demands. His message centered on the virtue of prayer and patience among the poor. Mullah Hibatullah said that the same God who created His creatures also provides for them — and that the poor should not complain or blame anyone for their poverty. “So-and-so can do nothing about it,” he said. But the “so-and-sos” he refers to are the very ones collecting religious taxes (usher) and financial dues from the people, while also denying them freedom, education, and work. If someone fails to pay usher on time or delays in feeding the mullahs and their allies, they face harsh punishment, which won’t be postponed to the Day of Judgment. Mullah Hibatullah stressed that both hunger and abundance are tests from God. The rich should be grateful for what they have, and the poor should be thankful for their lack of sustenance. According to him, the relationship between rich and poor Muslims, as defined by Islamic law, should be built on mercy and prayer: “The wealthy must show compassion to the needy, and the poor should pray for the wealthy and be content with their condition.” In his worldview, wealth is only a divine gift. No one can increase or decrease it, because everyone’s sustenance is written in their fate. In his eyes, theft, looting, exploitation, smuggling, and embezzlement are not the causes of widespread poverty or the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. “God ordained everything at the beginning of time,” he claims. He preached that the poor must remain silent and that it is religiously illegitimate for them to protest their circumstances. “When a child is conceived in the womb,” he said, “God commands the angel to write their fate — whether they will be rich or poor, how much sustenance they will have, and by what means they will earn it.” In his view, the poor have no right to question why others gain their wealth through theft, smuggling, looting, or violence — because the angel, by God’s order, wrote it that way from the beginning. The poor should not ask Mullah Hibatullah why his own office expenses in the second quarter of the last fiscal year amounted to two billion afghani — nearly six percent of the entire operating budget of his Emirate. Nor should they ask why, under his rule, more than 80 percent of the population — by some estimates, 28 million people — are hungry and in urgent need of aid.
According to Mullah Hibatullah, Afghanistan’s poor must unite with Taliban commanders, lumpen allies, smugglers, and looters because they are facing even greater enemies.
Jinn and humans: The enemies of Muslims
On the day Mullah Hibatullah delivered his sermon at the Eidgah in Kandahar, a short video circulated in the media. It showed several women crying out for help as they sat on the ground along the path to the Eidgah. In the Taliban’s Emirate, women are treated like jinn — supernatural beings who must exist, but remain unseen. Women are expected to be present, obedient, and faithful, but invisible. They must not be seen praying in mosques or participating in public religious life as men do. To the Taliban, women — like jinn — are categorized as either good or evil. Yet whether they are deemed good or bad, they are still expected to remain hidden. Just as God created jinn and kept them concealed from human eyes, commanding them to act in friendship or enmity from the shadows, women must also live out of sight, far from the gaze of men. In Mullah Hibatullah’s Eid sermon, the presence of jinn was more prominent than that of women. He called on poor and wealthy believers alike to unite, warning that “the enemies from among the jinn and humans” lie in wait for Muslims. According to him, “satanic forces — both jinn and human” are united, spreading discord and conspiracy across Islamic countries. Thus, he urged Muslims to rise above their personal and social divisions and awaken to the threat. Poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and injustice — these, in his view, are not the real concerns of Afghanistan’s Muslims. Instead, he insists that unity must be forged against the “satanic jinn and human forces” — threats that outweigh all others.
Villagers as friends, city-dwellers as foes
Over the past four years, Mullah Hibatullah has made no effort to conceal his hostility toward cities and urban life. He sees Kabul as a den of devils — a place of sin and corruption — and has anchored his Emirate in Kandahar, where rural customs and codes dominate. Though in his sermons he names jinn, devils, infidels, and Westerners as the enemies, the blade of his decrees and inhumane rulings has fallen almost exclusively on city dwellers. He and his allies have worked systematically to turn Afghanistan’s cities into villages. In his Eid sermon, he described democracy as “poisonous ignorance” that was finally eradicated thanks to “the front-line mujahedeen” and “the common rural folk.” He declared, “If jihad were to be divided, half would go to the fighters in the trenches, and the other half to the villagers.” According to him, villagers supported the war against cities and democracy by offering their homes, food, and even their children to the mujahedeen. He went on to warn that “infidels and democracy-seekers” are trying to turn Afghanistan once again into a burning battlefield — and that they aim to divide “the common people” (his term for poor villagers) from the Emirate. Hibatullah Akhundzada, addressing the poor and rural communities, said, “You are all subjects of the Emirate … and if you see me as your Imam … Unite … Obey my orders … Society will fall into order.” And if you do not, “you will ultimately be caught in wars.”
Paying attention to such details, such as wording in seemingly repetitive speeches, is essential to understanding the positions of Mullah Hibatullah and other Taliban leaders in grasping the current state of the country. There are countless flaws within the Taliban including foreign dependencies and deep-rooted ethnic and tribal prejudices but the defining characteristic of the group is its rural backwardness.
The Taliban are religious, -rural, and lumpen elements of society who are waging war against freedom, democracy, education, women’s social presence, and all other pillars of civil and democratic life.
Younus Negah is a researcher and writer from Afghanistan who is currently in exile in Turkey.>>
Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/04/07/denial-of-women-glorification-of-poverty-and-idealization-of-rural-life-in-mullah-hibatullahs-sermon/

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