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Women report Afghanistan

Stories from female journalists as the Taliban advance

26 April 2024

  • A young woman in a headscarf sits on a park bench

    Married at 10, abused and forced to flee without her children: an Afghan woman on life under the Taliban

    Now living in comparative freedom in Iran, 26-year-old Mahtab Eftekhar describes facing motherhood at 12 and explains why seeking justice for other women means she no longer fears death

31 August 2022

  • Afghans prepare to to be evacuated aboard a Qatari transport plane, at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August, 18, 2021. Qatar played an out-sized role in U.S. efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan. Now the tiny Gulf Arab state is being asked to help shape what is next for Afghanistan because of its ties with both Washington and the Taliban insurgents now in charge in Kabul. (Qatar Government Communications Office via AP)

    I have spent a year helping people flee the Taliban: failure is traumatic, success bittersweet

    Ruchi Kumar
    We are still trying to find ways to get visas – writing letters, appealing to governments – but the options are running out, says Ruchi Kumar

19 August 2022

  • Afghan journalist Zahra Joya with her sisters and niece

    We fled the Taliban in chaos, shock and terror. A year later we have a new home and hope

    Zahra Joya
    My work as a journalist made us targets. Now we have a safe new home and I am determined to keep reporting on the bravery of Afghan women and girls

14 August 2022

  • At a makeshift shelter in Kabul, an Afghan woman is one of many displaced families fleeing the violence in their provinces.

    ‘The Taliban no longer wanted to kill me. Now they wanted to marry me’

  • An Afghan woman begs on a road in Kabul, Afghanistan, 11 April 2022.

    ‘I was a policewoman. Now I beg in the street’: life for Afghan women one year after the Taliban took power

15 December 2021

  • A woman stands behind a curtain to separate female employees from men who work at Radio Begum in Kabul.

    ‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

    We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

1 October 2021

  • Taliban members in front of a mural depicting a woman behind barbed wire in Kabul, Afghanistan

    ‘I don’t know where to go’: uncertain fate of the women in Kabul’s shelters

    Women in refuges have been sent home to their abusers or to prison since the Taliban takeover. Those in the few shelters still open fear what lies ahead

10 September 2021

  • Female Afghan police trainees at a shooting range in Mazar-i-Sharif in 2012. At least 4,500 women have served with the police since 2001.

    ‘Tomorrow they will kill me’: Afghan female police officers live in fear of Taliban reprisals

    With at least four women, including a pregnant mother, targeted and killed by Taliban fighters, female ex-officers feel abandoned by the world

8 September 2021

  • A woman carries a child on to an evacuation flight at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

    ‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban

    Life for single mothers in Afghanistan has always been marred by stigma and poverty. Now with the Taliban in control, what few protections they had have disappeared

19 August 2021

  • Taliban fighter walks past a beauty salon, Kabul

    As I walk around Kabul, the streets are empty of women

    A few days ago the capital was full of women going about their business. Now, the few that remain walk fast and full of fear

15 August 2021

  • Outside a beauty parlour in Kabul last week

    Afghan women’s defiance and despair: ‘I never thought I’d have to wear a burqa. My identity will be lost’

    As city after city falls to the Taliban, women fear that the freedoms won since 2001 will be crushed

13 August 2021

  • 08 Divorce story in Kabul, Afghanistan: Roqia

    ‘Nowhere to go’: divorced Afghan women in peril as the Taliban close in

    As horror stories emerge from areas that have fallen to the Islamist militants, women living alone fear they have no route of escape

12 August 2021

  • Female journalists in Afghanistan are at increased risk of violence and extremist attacks as conflict between the government and Taliban worsens.

    ‘For as long as we can’: reporting as an Afghan woman as the Taliban advance

  • Afghans from northern provinces who fled the Taliban find refuge in a park in Kabul

    ‘I worry my daughters will never know peace’: women flee the Taliban – again

11 August 2021

  • Salima Mazari sits on a hill observing the frontline against the Taliban surrounded by armed men.

    ‘Sometimes I have to pick up a gun’: the female Afghan governor resisting the Taliban

    Salima Mazari, one of only three female district governors in Afghanistan, tells of her motivation to fight the militants

10 August 2021

  • An Afghan woman on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan

    ‘Please pray for me’: female reporter being hunted by the Taliban tells her story

    A young female journalist describes the panic and fear of being forced into hiding as cities across Afghanistan fall
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