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...

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...

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=...

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...

‘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...

“I began fight for the right to education from inside my home”: Interview with Rahil Talash zantimes.com/2025/12/17/i...

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...

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...

My father married me off with an old man for a promise of eye treatment zantimes.com/2025/12/10/m...

New research documents ISKP’s deadly campaign against Hazara-Shia in Afghanistan zantimes.com/2025/12/10/n...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The comfort of men never disturbed by the women they have killed zantimes.com/2025/11/28/t...

‘Sister, I’m dying..help me!’ How ‘family honour’ condemns women to pain and suffering in Afghanistan zantimes.com/2025/11/27/s...

We are proud to announce that our colleague Sana Atef has received the 2025 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award. At Zan Times, we are grateful to IWMF for recognizing the courage and work of our colleague. Help us celebrate her. Help us amplify her voice. youtu.be/wZcvBdwrBFU?...

Afghanistan is now a country where the youngest and poorest are trapped between hunger at home and violence on the streets. Child workers face arrest, forced labour, and the risk of disappearance in Taliban custody. Read more: zantimes.com/2025/11/20/c...

Child labourers are being rounded up, beaten, and imprisoned by the Taliban zantimes.com/2025/11/20/c...

"I want to tell them I'll clean your school for free—just accept my son." A Zan Times report follows an Afghan mother's struggle to enroll her child in an Iranian school, revealing a system that denies kids education despite official referral letters. zantimes.com/2025/11/14/t...

The Zan Times editorial team apologizes to its readers for publishing this inaccurate information and reaffirms its commitment to preventing such errors in the future. zantimes.com/2025/11/06/d...

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. zantimes.com/2025/11/10/l...

What was meant to be a night of joy in northern Afghanistan turned into one of mourning and devastation. zantimes.com/2025/11/06/d...

New UN Probe to investigate decades of Afghan abuses by all parties: An interview with Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan. youtu.be/dO-n_4AFM7Y

New UN Probe to investigate decades of Afghan abuses by all parties, interview with Richard Bennett zantimes.com/2025/10/31/n...

‘Where else can we go?’ As refugees return, Afghanistan’s housing crisis deepens zantimes.com/2025/10/30/w...

This time, airstrikes or foreign armies will not liberate Afghanistan. It will be reclaimed by the persistence of its people — by teachers who teach in secret, by journalists who report from secret locations, and by activists who refuse to be silent. zantimes.com/2025/10/30/h...

The court’s ruling has ignited fears that the Taliban will evict Hazara residents from their homes as part of a broader policy of forced displacement and demographic engineering. zantimes.com/2025/10/27/w...

Khalid was unmarried and a graduate in economics. His father, a former employee of the Interior Ministry, was killed in a bombing in 2014. Now, a second explosion has shattered what remained of their family. zantimes.com/2025/10/23/k...

Since girls were banned from schools in Afghanistan, families have faced very few alternatives. Most are either pressured or persuaded by financial incentives to send their daughters to religious schools.

Strengthening relations with the Taliban: How India overtook Pakistan zantimes.com/2025/10/15/s...

From Kabul to China: A Journey sparked by ‘Letters of an Afghan Woman’ zantimes.com/2025/10/13/f...

For Zarmina Paryani, who was imprisoned twice by the Taliban, the People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan was more than a legal process. zantimes.com/2025/10/11/g...

The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan held in Madrid from October 8–10, 2025, issued a preliminary statement by a panel of judges.

The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan aims to document and expose the systematic gender persecution under Taliban rule. zantimes.com/2025/10/08/p...

With jobs disappearing, many women and girls have turned to informal work as they are the few livelihoods that have not yet been explicitly banned for them. zantimes.com/2025/10/06/t...

From Monday to Wednesday evening, Afghanistan experienced its first total internet and telephone communication shutdown. The effects were felt immediately throughout Afghanistan. zantimes.com/2025/10/03/w...

On Monday, the Taliban on the order of their leader, shut down internet access across Afghanistan. youtube.com/shorts/dTtfo...

After first excluding women and girls from secondary school and further education, the regime has been building a vast new network of religious schools that encourage and incentivise a new alternative. zantimes.com/2025/09/21/s...

“These online classes were my only source of hope.” The Taliban had ordered Afghanistan’s fibre-optic internet to be shut down. The restrictions follow a directive from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, to “prevent immorality.” zantimes.com/2025/09/23/i...

Over the past four years, the Taliban have steadily erased women from Afghanistan’s educational and academic landscape. Now they have banned textbooks authored or compiled by women. zantimes.com/2025/09/18/t...

For the past three years, 15-year-old Noria has continued her studies through educational radio programs. Her father, Haji Chinar Gul, is her greatest supporter. youtube.com/shorts/1B4LE...

Given the Taliban’s current approach to educational institutions, the regime appears determined to transform Afghanistan’s universities into religious seminaries of the Taliban’s design. Read more: zantimes.com/2025/09/16/b...

Radio stations have become a lifeline for girls’ education, with men—fathers, brothers, teachers, and operators—risking their lives to deliver lessons and homework. zantimes.com/2025/09/15/t...

In the shattered houses of Wadeer village in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, survivors of Sunday’s devastating earthquake that has killed more than 2,200 people say they are still waiting for the most basic help: food and shelter. youtu.be/1gPoDzEqywU

What is happening to Afghanistan’s Ismailis is not simply persecution — it is an attempt at erasure. Forced religious conformity, cultural destruction, and targeted violence are reshaping one of Afghanistan’s oldest minority communities. zantimes.com/2025/09/08/a...

In the shattered houses of Wadeer village in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, survivors of Sunday’s devastating earthquake that has killed more than 2,200 people say they are still waiting for the most basic help: food and shelter. zantimes.com/2025/09/05/a...

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. zantimes.com/2025/08/28/i...

On the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, its relationship with neighbouring countries — including China — have moved toward a kind of strategic alliance. zantimes.com/2025/08/21/w...

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. zantimes.com/2025/08/26/m...