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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.

White shoes
Zan Times - August 28, 2025 - By: Azadah
{Imprisoned for white shoes: Kabul’s women speak of Taliban arrests
In the past month, a wave of arrests — really abductions — has swept across Kabul. Women and girls accused of “improper hijab” have been dragged off the streets, out of markets, and even from restaurants by the Taliban’s morality police. I spoke with several who endured these detentions. Their faces are etched with grief and tears as they recount the terror they felt when taken. Tarana was walking with her cousin near her home in Qala-e-Naw, in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, when Taliban enforcers stopped them. “Even though our hijab was completely proper and we were only not wearing masks, one of those women grabbed my hand, pulled me to the side of the street, and said, ‘Your hijab is not correct! Get in the car,’” says Tarana. The two young women were held inside the vehicle for about half an hour before being released, thanks to their protests and the intervention of onlookers who had surrounded the car. Three weeks later, Tarana is still in shock. Withdrawn, she sits in a darkened room with the curtains drawn. She no longer joins her family or plays with her younger siblings. “How easily one can be kidnapped and imprisoned just for being a woman,” she repeats to herself.
Tarana’s story is not unique.
There’s a War on Women in Afghanistan.
Negar, who lives in the Karte Sakhi area of Kabul, recalls her ordeal: “My mother was sick, so I hurriedly got ready to visit her. Near the main road, the ‘white coats’ [Taliban enforcers] stopped me and mocked me, saying, ‘Where are you going, movie girl?’” The Taliban arrested her for wearing white shoes, wearing makeup, and leaving her home without a male guardian. Taken to Police District 3, she was allowed to call her husband. “While I was detained, I felt death there,” she says. “They hurled insults at my husband, repeatedly calling him dishonourable.” The Taliban warned him that “a woman has no right to leave the house without a mahram [male guardian], and in such an appearance,” explains Negar.  Since then, she finds that  stepping outside her home is a nightmare. Tabasom was returning from an English course when she was detained in Pul-e-Khoshk, Dasht-e-Barchi, and taken to Police District 18. “My hijab was proper. They only called me a ‘dancer’ because my clothes were bright-coulored,” she explains. Taliban officers told her she must wear all-black, warning that bright clothing “attracts men’s attention.” She spent more than four hours in detention, enduring insults, humiliation, and beatings.  Released after her parents guaranteed her freedom, Tabasom has not left the house since. “After that incident, I have nightmares every night. Everywhere feels terrifying to me,” she says. During her confinement, the Taliban warned her not to speak of her arrest: “They told me not to post about it on Facebook, or they would imprison me and my entire family.” These arrests have sown fear across the capital. Mohammad, a driver who works in Kabul, says he has repeatedly seen women and girls taken away. “They gathered both veiled and unveiled women and loaded them into vehicles,” he recalls. For him, the Taliban’s goal is clear: “They want to create an atmosphere of terror so that no woman dares to leave her home.” Ali, another minibus driver, has also witnessed women being pulled off public vans. “They dragged women and forced them into their vehicles with beatings,” he says. The experience has changed his own family’s life. As the father of two teenage daughters who had been studying English, Ali now forbids them from attending classes. “I stopped my daughters from going to their course. My heart would shatter if one day I saw them beaten like that and taken away. It’s better they stay home,” he explains. The terror is not isolated to Kabul. Across Afghanistan, women and girls find themselves imprisoned in their own homes — too afraid to go out because they are terrified of arrest or imprisonment by the Taliban. Yet, they also find that remaining at home brings fear of its own, especially a darkening future where no girl goes to school. For the women of Afghanistan, the terror they experience has no end. They live with destinies shaped by pain.} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/08/28/imprisoned-for-white-shoes-kabuls-women-speak-of-taliban-arrests/


Khadija Haidary
Zan Times - August 26, 2025 - by Khadija Haidary
{My father, my First teacher
On Wednesday, July 23, at noon, my father fell into eternal sleep. The news of his death struck me like a blow. Since then, I feel as though nothing is left that could truly shake me. I carry a heavy grief, but also the memory of a man whose devotion changed the course of my life. As a child, I saw my father clearly: a man who, despite holding a high government position, personally enrolled me and my sisters in school. He taught me the alphabet himself and, in the middle of his official duties, still sat with me over homework. By the third grade I could read, and he encouraged me with small rewards. If I correctly read the title and author of the books he was reading, he gave me ten afghani. Now I understand: he wanted me to know books and writers, to nurture a love of reading. By the time I reached high school, he had left government service to become a teacher. A teacher who devoted himself entirely to his daughters. At times I grew tired of his constant attention, but he carried within him a mission: to raise daughters who could stand on their own feet. When I sat the Kankor, Afghanistan’s university entrance exam, he searched for tutors, insisted I learn well, and later reproached me when I confessed to struggling in physics. When the results came, I was admitted to economics. He was quietly pleased but told me I should have pursued engineering, pointing to girls he had seen succeed in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif. Yet he respected my choice and turned his attention to guiding my younger sisters. After graduation, it was again my father who found job opportunities, who accompanied me to every exam, traveling between provinces, never tiring of the effort he poured into us. When I left our district to continue studying, he did not hold me back. Instead, he accompanied me to Kabul, pressing money into my hand so I could buy a computer. In 2018 and 2019, as I studied and worked in Kabul, our district became a battlefield. In one fight, a bullet passed close by my father’s ear. Frightened, my brother and I begged him to move the family. He agreed, abandoning his house, cattle, farmland, orchards, and grain stores to bring us to Kabul. We had barely settled three years when the Republic collapsed. In the first week after the fall, my father packed again and returned to our village. He told me: “You too can seek refuge with me.” Since the collapse of 2021, I too have fallen many times—in spirit and in life. Each time, it was he who pulled me back from the edge. More than once, he walked from Takhar to Kabul, brought me home, and cared for me until I regained my strength. When he saw me looking well on camera, he would smile and say, “You look good,” before breaking into a laugh. When I crossed into Pakistan, I called him. He asked why I had turned myself into a wanderer, why young people could not stay together. He urged me to write, often hurrying me: “Write it now!” Perhaps he sensed his time was short. In exile, I often called him in tears over the smallest struggles, seeking his help, sometimes reproaching him for not being able to fix my life. I always believed he could solve anything. I was still that little girl, following in his footsteps, waiting for him to say: “Bravo, you walk like a great man.” When I heard of his death, I cried: “Did life take my father too, in the very days when I was fighting it with all my strength?” Now I think of his quiet efforts that shaped my life, lifting me from a rural girl who milked cows to a writer and journalist. He pushed me to write more serious articles, to cite reliable sources, and to send my work to newspapers. In Afghanistan, for a girl to become literate—for a girl to become a writer—requires a father who sees his daughters’ education as his sacred duty. My father could have sought power and wealth, but he chose instead the modest life of a schoolteacher, fixing his eyes on us, his daughters. Three of us advanced by skipping grades, all under his guidance. Today’s Afghanistan is different. Fathers no longer have the freedom to give wings to their daughters’ dreams. My father lived our dreams as though they were his own, rejoicing in even our smallest achievements. Even now, there are fathers who sacrifice everything for their daughters’ education—who migrate, who endure hardship again and again in neighbouring countries just so their daughters can study. In war-torn countries like Afghanistan, a girl needs immense support to finish high school, to reach university. Every successful girl today knows her father as her first supporter, her first hero. Without fathers like mine, it would not have been possible for girls to leave remote villages, go to big cities, and pursue an education.} Source: https://zantimes.com/2025/08/26/my-father-my-first-teacher/

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