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Zan Times
@zantimes.bsky.social
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A women-led newsroom reporting on the human rights situation, women and the LGBTQ community in Afghanistan.

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Zan Times @zantimes.bsky.social · 27d
Led by Afghan women, Zan Times is an investigative newsroom exposing human rights violations under Taliban rule. We provide fact-based reporting from inside Afghanistan, amplifying voices the Taliban wants to erase.
Sign up for our newsletter: zantimes.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=...
zantimes.bsky.social
The publication of the Taliban’s new penal code marks yet another step in their effort to drag the country back into a medieval order, this time under the guise of a seemingly legal document.
zantimes.com/2026/02/02/h...
February 2, 2026 at 5:30 PM
zantimes.bsky.social
Inside Afghanistan, some women continue to write, often at great risk. Nazanin, writes short stories and essays from her home in a province near Kabul. “Sometimes it feels like the Taliban’s gun barrel is pointed directly at my throat,”
zantimes.com/2026/01/29/w...
January 30, 2026 at 4:45 PM
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Since the Taliban’s informal birth-control ban began, contraceptives have disappeared and clinics have closed. This report reveals a reproductive health system in free fall, where forced pregnancies and untreated complications now define daily life.
zantimes.com/2026/01/29/t...
January 29, 2026 at 2:08 PM
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Khadija Ahmadzada’s arrest in Herat is far more than a simple headline about an athlete. It is a mirror reflecting the systemic policy of erasing women across territories under Taliban control.
zantimes.com/2026/01/28/t...
January 28, 2026 at 5:21 PM
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The Taliban penal code is a manual for legalized abuse
zantimes.com/2026/01/27/t...
The Taliban penal code is a manual for legalized abuse
The Taliban introduced its new Penal Code of the Taliban Courts as a replacement for Afghanistan’s national penal code. Unfortunately, it lacks even the most basic formal and substantive standards of ...
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January 27, 2026 at 4:41 PM
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The words slave and master may sound offensive today to many. Even in Afghanistan, formal slavery no longer exists as people are not openly labeled as slaves and masters. In practice, however, the Taliban system is quasi-slaveholding.
zantimes.com/2026/01/26/t...
January 26, 2026 at 5:51 PM
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The murder of a woman journalist whose death wasn’t even reported
zantimes.com/2026/01/23/t...
The murder of a woman journalist whose death wasn’t even reported
She was killed after midnight,  in one of the apartment buildings in the city centre of Maima. Her cries for help pierced the stillness of the night — cries the walls heard, but no one answered, thoug...
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January 23, 2026 at 1:44 PM
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The vanishing coverage of women’s lives is a policy risk
zantimes.com/2026/01/20/t...
The vanishing coverage of women’s lives is a policy risk
This op-ed is published in partnership with More to Her Story and Middle East Uncovered.  Sarah Little and Zahra Nader In 2023, I remember sitting with a teenage girl in a motel room in Jordan who was...
zantimes.com
January 20, 2026 at 5:35 PM
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Knowledge is resistance: Afghan women and STEM
zantimes.com/2026/01/20/k...
Knowledge is resistance: Afghan women and STEM
Prolonged crises always pose a threat to education but the current situation in Afghanistan is perhaps the most extreme case in decades. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where secondar...
zantimes.com
January 20, 2026 at 11:12 AM
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Chinese readers of my stories also noted that the lives of Afghan women reminded them of The Handmaid’s Tale. Was it a reality that had found its way into a book, or a fictional story that had entered our lived reality?
zantimes.com/2026/01/14/w...
January 14, 2026 at 9:23 PM
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Smuggling, detention, and survival: a woman’s journey through Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan
zantimes.com/2026/01/12/s...
Smuggling, detention, and survival: a woman’s journey through Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan
Everything was cold and buried under snow when I set out on my journey to leave Afghanistan. I reached Herat after dark. With a suitcase in my hand, I joined three young men who had come on the same b...
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January 13, 2026 at 6:15 PM
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In rural Afghanistan, women have long managed water use, sustained household agriculture, and passed down ecological knowledge critical to the survival of their families and communities. Yet they are also the most vulnerable to environmental collapse.
zantimes.com/2026/01/09/h...
January 9, 2026 at 4:47 PM
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Rabia Balkhi High School has effectively been reduced to a girls’ primary school. Somaya, a staff member, says that of 56 classrooms once filled with students, only 17 are now in use. The others stand empty.
zantimes.com/2026/01/07/h...
January 7, 2026 at 4:17 PM
zantimes.bsky.social
Led by Afghan women, Zan Times is an investigative newsroom exposing human rights violations under Taliban rule. We provide fact-based reporting from inside Afghanistan, amplifying voices the Taliban wants to erase.
Sign up for our newsletter: zantimes.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=...
January 6, 2026 at 4:54 PM
zantimes.bsky.social
Zulala Hashemi rose to public attention after appearing on one of Afghanistan’s most popular music competition programmes on Tolo TV, where she placed second among 12contestants. After the show ended, she disappeared from public view.
Read more: zantimes.com/2026/01/05/a...
January 5, 2026 at 2:19 PM
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‘Everything we had, they took away’: how women are defying the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on protest
This report has been published in partnership with the @theguardian.com
zantimes.com/2025/12/29/e...
‘Everything we had, they took away’: how women are defying the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on protest
Since the Taliban’s return to power, women and girls have been barred from nearly every aspect of public life: schools, universities, most jobs and even parks.
zantimes.com
December 30, 2025 at 6:29 AM
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“I began fight for the right to education from inside my home”: Interview with Rahil Talash
zantimes.com/2025/12/17/i...
“I began fight for the right to education from inside my home”: Interview with Rahil Talash
Rahil Ansari Talash was born in Balkh Province. She studied law and political science and began her professional career as a literacy teacher. Starting in 2014, she worked in the private banking secto...
zantimes.com
December 18, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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First published in 1967, Afghanistan in the Course of History was written by Mir Gholam Mohammad Ghobar, a historian, journalist, and political activist who played a leading role in the country’s democratic movement.
zantimes.com/2025/12/16/w...
December 16, 2025 at 5:41 PM
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When my husband proposed, he 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.
zantimes.com/2025/12/10/m...
December 15, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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My father married me off with an old man for a promise of eye treatment
zantimes.com/2025/12/10/m...
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. 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,...
zantimes.com
December 11, 2025 at 8:41 AM
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New research documents ISKP’s deadly campaign against Hazara-Shia in Afghanistan
zantimes.com/2025/12/10/n...
December 10, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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Farida is a Ph.D. student at the University of Gilan in Iran and is researching Persian language and literature. She lives in Paris and has recently published two books: The Collector of Sorrows in French, and then The Love-Sorrow of Women in Persian.
zantimes.com/2025/12/08/i...
December 8, 2025 at 7:25 PM
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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.
zantimes.com/2025/12/06/t...
December 6, 2025 at 12:07 PM
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As the world marks November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Afghan women have endured the worst forms of violence under the Taliban regime for more than four years.
Read more: zantimes.com/2025/12/03/t...
December 3, 2025 at 4:09 PM
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My maternal cousin came to meet me outside my madrasa and offered to walk me home. We were both happy to see each other, unaware that this would be the last time we met as cousins. For the “crime” of talking and walking together, the Taliban arrested us.
zantimes.com/2025/12/01/t...
December 1, 2025 at 10:30 PM